Despite the country's political instability and widespread poverty, Nicaragua's mobile penetration will top 80% by 2015 from 53.9% in 2010, fueled by expansion of prepaid subscriptions and urban mobile broadband connections, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.

Nicaragua: Prepaid Services to Drive Mobile Growth in a Challenging Market offers a precise profile of the country's telecommunications, media, and technology sectors based on proprietary data from our research in the market. It provides detailed competitive analysis of both the fixed and mobile sectors, tracks the market shares of technologies and services, and monitors the introduction and spread of new technologies.

Nicaragua is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% over the next five years to advance from US$478 million for 2010 to US$655 million in 2015, well ahead of the 3.7% average expected for Latin America, notes Jose Magana, Senior Analyst at Pyramid Research and author of the report. "In Central America, the growth rate in Nicaragua will be the fastest of all countries due to its still-early stage of penetration in mobile services and our expectation for growth even in the fixed sector," he says.

Mobile penetration in Nicaragua will close at 53.9% in 2010, the lowest in Central America. "The low competitiveness of the market, with just two mobile operators, paired with the lowest income in the region curbs the adoption of services," Magana explains. "There is still a large percentage of the population underserved; by the same token, experiences in Africa with mobile payments and health initiatives prove that there are opportunities for operators if services targeting the bottom of the pyramid succeed," he adds.
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