Forecasting of mobile phone services subscription in a saturating market

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make a short-term forecast for the growth of mobile phone subscribers in India. Using data of mobile phone subscribers from the year 1995 to 2016, a forecast was performed for four years (2020). Gompertz distribution function was used in this forecasting. The Gompertz distribution function is a type of mathematical model for a time series, where growth is slowest at the start and end of a time period. In case of mobile phone subscription, the assumption is made that the growth is slow at the beginning and it becomes saturated towards the end when most of the population has already subscribed to the services. The result of this study suggests that by the year 2020, India will reach a density of 94 subscribers per 100 population.