Monday, April 7, 2008

Wireless explosion

Every month that passes by, almost as many new net mobile subscriptions as the entire population of Belgium (10m) are added in each of both China and India.

China has already reached half a billion subscriptions (one in three Chinese has got one) and India reached 250 million (one in four). Currently India has more subscriptions than the US (where 7 out of 10 citizens own one). In so doing, India has now become the nr 2 worldwide, behind China. This is if you don't count the EU as a single entity.

In other words, China, India and the US together are good for a billion subscriptions, 30% of the world total of 3.3 billion. Besides, this total is 20% more than the previous year (2006).

More than a billion new mobile phones are being sold annually, with Nokia supplying 40% of these (437M phones in 2007), which is actually more than the following three suppliers combined.

The total services revenue from using wireless phones (voice and data) are good for 700 billion USD, of which data accounts for 17% and voice for 83%. For some of the largest operators the data share is even higher, above 30% and growing. The lion share of the data services revenue is attributed to SMS's. Can you imagine the size we are talking about? More than 100B USD in sending SMS's?!

Finally, of the 10 largest operators, 6 are from China, Japan and Korea, 3 from the US and one from Europe. If you were still wondering whether the Far East is gonna beat the living shit out of the West, dream on... we are dead meat!

These and many other interesting fun facts can be found in a recent update of the Wireless industry published by Chetan Sharma Consulting. In their homepage you can also download for free that full report, in both PDF and PPT format.

It's a pity the study has approached Europe in terms of a number of selected countries rather than the combined European Union. With a market of 500 million people I am sure the EU must be ahead of both India and the US in terms of total subscriptions and services revenues. Anyways!

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