Mobile phones overtake bicycles

IN INDIA, the mobile has become the fastest selling consumer item - pushing bicycles to the number-two slot. In fact, India is the third largest user of GSM phones - with 83 million subscribers.

That puts India ahead of the USA with 78 million GSM users but behind China with 370 million users and Russia with 145 million. The GSM Association (GSMA) is claiming that GSM and W-CDMA/3GSM now account for 82.4 per cent of all global mobile connections.

That puts cdmaOne and Japan's PDC with roughly 17 per cent of the global market. Even Qualcomm acknowledges this with its latest Q3 revenue guidance. Raising predicted handset chip sales to 55 million.

Qualcomm's saying that its W-CDMA handset shipments and average selling prices are exceeding expectations, plus demand for CDMA2000 infrastructure chips remains strong. Nothing about cdmaOne/CDMA2000 handsets doing well.

Anyway, the consequence of all this is that GSM/3GSM will very soon sign up its second billionth subscriber having taken a mere 30 months to add its second billion after the first billion took 12 years.

Still, there are only 72 million 3GSM users in the world. But the interesting bit is that GSM now has more users in developing countries than in developed countries.

The GSMA's attributes this partly to its 'Emerging Market Handset Initiative' which delivered the first sub $30 GSM phone. Now you know how much all the components can cost. µ

L'Inq
GSMA Web site