Forecasting and analyzing the competitive diffusion of mobile cellular broadband and fixed broadband in Taiwan with limited historical data

Taiwan experienced the rapid growth of mobile cellular broadband from 2005 by introducing 3G operations and had higher penetration than the average of the developing countries, the world, and even the developed countries. There are many forecasting models which were developed and successfully predicted the diffusion of long lifecycle product, but there are very few forecasting models which were developed for predicting new products with short lifecycle. Assumption of these models is always the growth of products follows an S-shaped curve. As for the products which were just introduced to the market, it is very difficult to identify if they follow an S-shaped curve with their limited historical data. This research aims to apply Grey system theory to predict the diffusion of mobile cellular broadband and fixed broadband in Taiwan since Grey system theory has a characteristic which requires very limited primitive data (the least 4 data) to build a differential forecasting model. We use penetration as an indicator to describe the diffusion of new products. The numerical data show that the Grey forecasting models GM(1,1) built in this paper have higher prediction accuracy than logistic models and grey Verhulst models. Moreover, we apply Lotka–Volterra model to analyze the competitive relationship between mobile cellular broadband and fixed broadband. The empirical data show that the relationship is commensalism rather than predator–prey. These results can be extended to contribute to other researches.