Carlos Olin Montalvo III

The above chart uses a formula that factors revenue growth of an operator vs. the GDP growth of that operator's country and the mobile penetration of that country. The formula is intended to measure revenue growth against GDP growth to reward the players that are performing despite GDP potentially slowing. Mobile penetration has been used as a multiplying factor to give more weight to mature markets, as low penetration markets have a natural tendency to show high revenue growth through high subscriber additions.

Thus, operators generating the highest mobile revenues during 2008 are primarily from the developed markets. However, these operators don't figure very high in the rankings of revenue growth because some emerging markets have very high subscriber growth, partially due to the introduction of value-added products and services. Further, operators in developed markets have felt the pinch of economic slowdown in pushing their services.

The above figure shows the top 10 operators worldwide based on subscriber market share. Naturally, there are caveats to this ranking as well, since this performance measurement may make the evaluation biased in favor of operators that have been operating in a market for a longer time.