Teen and tween wireless growth in Canada to lag behind US for number of years

Wireless carriers in the United States are increasingly looking at tweeners – those between the ages of eight and 12 – for subscriber growth as traditional target markets begin to saturate, according to the Yankee Group. But north of the 49th parallel, overall penetration is still hovering around the 50% mark, meaning the tween market has yet to gain the importance it has in the United States. Marina Amoroso, wireless/mobile analyst with the Boston-based research firm, notes that penetration of the tween market in the US is already at about 30% and this is expected to double within the next four to five years. She adds that growth won’t be uniform across this segment. "I think that certainly the older age segments – the 10-to-13 year-olds – are going to be where the real opportunities lie. That’s where you’re going to have penetration from about 30% to 40% of 13-year-olds having a cell phone right now to around 60% or so having a cell phone in 2009/2010. You’re really going to start increasing that and diving deeper into those age segments," she tells Report on Wireless. Canada will not experience this type of growth in the tween market for at least a couple of years, says Amoroso, adding that this segment may never adopt wireless to the same degree as it is projected to in the United States. She notes that the family-share plans are much more prevalent in the US than they are in Canada. The dearth of family-share plans here has stunted growth in the tween segment. The conservative nature of Canadians when it comes to wireless may also play a role in lower tween and teen penetration rates, according to the Yankee Group analyst. Amoroso says health risks associated with cell phone use in the youth population could get greater play in Canada than they have in the US. "I think there might be a little more reluctance on the Canadian side just from a societal perspective of having young children with cell phones," she says. "I think you’re going to see more of those societal ‘should our children be having cell phones?’, discussions in Canada that you do in the US market. So, that could stem some growth and perhaps you might not ever see reach very far below the 10-year-old market and I would not be surprised if that was the case." Rogers Wireless broke into the tween market last year when it began offering the Firefly phone. The handset has only five keys and parents can pre-program 22 telephone numbers on the device. Amoroso says Rogers is really only testing the market at this stage. "I think it’s a little early for the market at this point honestly and it appears with their launch of the Firefly, they’re just trying to put their foot in the waters of this tween market and figure out where it’s going to go," she tells RoW. But the Canadian carriers in general will be much more cautious than their US counterparts with respect to marketing to the tween segment, says Amoroso, adding they will likely focus more on the 14-to-16 year-old segment than the under-13 age group. "If they do , it will probably still be a number of years off, and I’m sure they will ease themselves into it with family share programs."

Teen and tween wireless growth in Canada to lag behind US for number of years

News | January 25, 2006

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