GSM has taken more than fifty percent of the market share in the Americas, adding nearly 100 million new customers from June 2005 to June 2006. At the end of 2Q 2006, two billion of the world’s 2.41 billion cellular subscribers used GSM/UMTS. Informa’s World Cellular Information Service projects three billion GSM/UMTS customers by 2009, with 551 million of these subscribers using UMTS services. Some other notes:
- At 2Q 2005, GSM held 38% of the Americas market. Twelve months later, that market share has grown to 51%, and in several key countries the market
shares are even more impressive.
- Brazil added 21 million new GSM customers in the year ending June 2006, and now represents more than 57% of the Brazilian wireless mobile market.
- GSM in Argentina added 12 million new GSM customers from June 2005 to June 2006, and now holds a market share of 77%, compared to CDMA and TDMA at 11%
and 10%, respectively.
- GSM in Colombia added 14 million new GSM customers from June 2005 to June 2006, with a current market share of 80%, compared to CDMA and TDMA at 10%
each.
- In Mexico, where 16 million new GSM subscriptions in one year have contributed to an almost 78% growth rate, GSM has captured 71% of market share, up
from 48% only one year ago. This compares to a share of 18.5% for TDMA and 7% for CDMA.
- In the twelve months from Q2 2005 to Q2 2006, the GSM family of technologies gained nearly 500 million new customers worldwide, including 41 million new
UMTS 3G customers.
- In June 2006, the industry milestone of 2 billion GSM subscriptions worldwide was reached, including subscriptions to UMTS at 70 million, and in the past
year, new GSM subscriptions accounted for more than 90% of all net new digital wireless customers.
- Mobile broadband UMTS/HSDPA now has 45 networks in service in 32 countries and another 66 networks planned, in deployment, or in trial.
- Although voice still constitutes most cellular traffic, wireless data now exceeds 10 percent of ARPU.
- Data is based on figures from Informa Telecoms & Media World Cellular Information Service (WCIS).
3G Americas’ President, Chris Pearson, stated, “2006 is the year for HSDPA. Only one year ago there were no commercial networks in play, and today you have more than 70 million customers using GSM for mobile broadband. Expect to see nearly all of the 289 operators publicly committed to deploying UMTS execute HSDPA on their networks, thereby achieving the best possible use of their spectrum assets, the lowest cost per bit of data and a wide variety in devices and applications for their customers.”http://www.3gamericas.org/