­New research reports has revealed that given Hong Kong’s market maturity and high penetration levels, researchers expect that the focus of operators to continue shifting from subscriber acquisition to subscriber retention, an effort to be pursued by increasing investment in service innovation.

It is expected that the Hong Kong telecom market to generate $4.8 billion in 2010, recovering to 2008 levels after a revenue decrease to $4.6 billion in 2009. In 2010, however, solid growth in mobile data usage and a recovery in mobile voice revenue due to increased usage levels will lead the market to renewed growth. The growth will continue over the next five years, when the territory’s total telecom services market revenue will advance at a 2.8% CAGR to reach $5.5 billion in 2015.

Data and content services will be the main growth drivers, with mobile data services rising at a 10% CAGR between 2010-2015 on the strength of increased adoption of data-centric devices, such as 3G data cards and smartphones. To that end, mobile operators have been very aggressive, introducing smartphone models, data cards, and embedded devices, most of which have been successful in encouraging higher levels of data usage.

Hong Kong’s broadband and mobile penetration rates are among the highest in Asia, respectively at 94% of households and 144% of the population at year-end 2010. Operators must give special attention to creating innovative content and value-added services because broadband connectivity is reaching saturation levels. They must also pay special attention to bandwidth capacity to avoid overload.

Mobile data growth will be driven by the efforts of operators, such as 3, PCCW, and SmarTone, which are aggressively offering mobile data cards, netbook data card bundles, and smartphones with unlimited data access plans. Pay-TV growth will benefit from operators’ bundled offerings for both new and existing customers, as well as by attractive pricing plans and FTTx expansion.