The domestic market for telecommunications equipment in FY96 is expected to exceed 4 trillion yen, amounting to 4.2978 trillion yen and a healthy growth rate of 28.5%. This is an indication that the industry has finally recovered from the economic slowdown.

By equipment category, wired terminal equipment continued to show a slow recovery, totaling 815.4 billion yen, a growth of 1.3% from the previous year. Mobile terminal equipment, on the other hand, amounted to 977.3 billion yen, a robust growth rate of 43.9% from the previous year. Network equipment also showed a large growth amounting to 1.3758 trillion yen, or a growth rate of 25% from the previous year. Radio network equipment amounted to 9.343 billion yen, a growth rate of 62.4%.

There are two underlying factors to these high growth rates. First is the growth in mobile telecommunications market. Deregulation with the outright sales of terminal equipment in 1994, the lowering of rates as a result of competition among telecommunications carriers, and the improvement of services as a result of such factors as the increase in the number of base stations have all contributed to the explosive popularity of mobile telecommunications. This is evident in the growth of cellular and PHS subscribers, which totaled 21.54 million as of the end of November 1996, a growth of 13.58 million subscribers from the same month the previous year.

Another reason is the arrival of the age of multimedia seen in the high penetration of personal computers and the boom in the Internet. These have resulted in the rapid growth of private leased lines, and ISDN and other digital circuits, with a large growth in demand for transmission devices.

The robust domestic market has resulted in the increase of imports which is expected to reach 15 billion yen for FY96, an increase of 58.6% from the previous year. This would result in the fourth consecutive two-digit growth.

Lastly, according to figures released in the "Telecommunications Equipment Demand Forecast" published by CIAJ in January 1997, the telecommunications equipment market is expected to have an annual growth rate of 5.8%, reaching 4.7 trillion yen in the year 2001.

Terminal equipment are expected to become increasingly mobile and value-added with data transmission functions. Computer networks are expected to grow with increased digitization and the spread of the Internet.

For more information, see another article titled, "Telecommunications Equipment Statistics."

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