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Average revenue per user (ARPU), sometimes known as average revenue per unit, is a measure used primarily by consumer communications, digital media, and networking companies, defined as the total
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...
divided by the number of subscribers. The term is used by companies that offer
subscription services The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a Product (business), product or Service (business), service. The model Publication by subscription, was pioneer ...
to clients for example, telephone carriers,
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...
s, and hosts. It is a measure of the
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...
generated by one customer phone,
pager A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a Wireless communication, wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays Alphanumericals, alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response p ...
, etc., per unit time, typically per year or month. In mobile telephony, ARPU includes not only the revenues billed to the customer each month for usage but also the revenue generated from incoming calls, payable within the regulatory interconnection regime. Digital media and social media companies, which often rely on advertising revenue generated by users with free accounts, pay particularly close attention to their ARPU. Variations in ARPU reflect changes in the companies' ability to generate revenue and heavily impact their stock prices. That provides the company a granular view at a per user or unit basis and allows it to track revenue sources and growth. ARPU is also used in the
video game industry The video game industry is the tertiary industry, tertiary and quaternary industry, quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the video game development, development, marketing, distribution (marketing), distribution, ...
for games that support microtransactions or are offered as games as a service, as similarly, the bulk of revenue in such games comes from a small percentage of the overall population. There is a trend by telecommunications and Internet companies and their suppliers to sell extra services to users and a lot of the promotion that is used by the companies talks of increased ARPU for the operators. It typically manifests in the form of value-added services such as entertainment being sold to customers especially in markets where the primary service offered to the customer, such as the telephony or Internet service, is sold at a commodity rate.


Calculation

To calculate ARPU, a standard time period must be defined. Most telecommunications carriers operate by the month. The total revenue generated by all units (paying subscribers or communications devices) during that period is determined. Then that figure is divided by the number of units. Because the number of units can vary from day to day, the average number of units must be calculated or estimated for a given month to obtain the most accurate possible ARPU figure for that month. Also related is the ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User), which is calculated by dividing up the revenue amongst the users who paid anything at all. That yields a figure that is significantly larger than ARPU. For example, in the case of a subscription game that has a free to play version, the ARPPU, measured by accounts, is the subscription price, diluted slightly by free trials. A related measure is the ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User). Other common measure is ARPC (Average Revenue Per Customer), some customers generate higher revenue than other because these customer contract more telecommunications services or generate more use than other customers and so these customer have a higher ARPC, than others customers for the same telecommunication company. Average margin per user (AMPU) is another criterion for measuring the success of telephone companies. The central premise is that by attention to the
margin Margin may refer to: Physical or graphical edges *Margin (typography), the white space that surrounds the content of a page * Continental margin, the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust *Leaf ...
produced per sold unit, not the amount of cash (
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...
) earned from each customer, one can afford low volumes and still have a healthy company. High volumes can also bring a significant edge until competition forces prices down. Telecom analysts is traditionally"Forget the Revenues - Focus on Margins"
'' MobileIN'', April 4, 2005
highly focused on ARPU because the typical telco has had huge infrastructure costs that needs to be serviced by a considerable ARPU. Another use of "AMPU" in some telephone companies (in particular Telenor) is Average Minutes Per User, meaning the amount of time (measured in minutes) the average subscriber talks (or listens) in their phones. That is also called Minutes-Of-Use or MOU. ARPU is widely used by Internet Protocol television (
IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...
) service providers.


See also

* Application enablement *
Mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...


References


External links


ARPU definition at Investopedia

PC Magazine Definition
{{telecommunications Telecommunications economics