Explosive Growth for GSM and UMTS/HSPA in Americas: 67% Share of Market

8/27/08 - 3G Americas reports on the continued expansion of wireless services throughout the Western Hemisphere and the explosive growth of increasing GSM/HSPA subscriptions. In one year ending June 30, 2008, GSM/HSPA added more than 115 million subscriptions in the Americas region with a market share of 67% . According to industry research firm, Informa Telecoms & Media, global GSM/HSPA wireless subscriptions as of June 30, 2008 totaled 3.2 billion, adding more than a million new subscriptions for the GSM family of technologies per day worldwide.

Informa forecasts subscriptions to UMTS/HSPA will number nearly half a billion worldwide by the end of 2009, and will pass the one billion mark in 2012. Total GSM/HSPA connections will number just over 3.9 billion by the end of 2009 according to Informa's forecasts.

GSM operators throughout North, Central and South America continue to evolve their networks to UMTS/HSPA. To date, there are 29 commercial UMTS-HSPA networks in the Americas region in 16 countries, and that number is accelerating with the economies of the global GSM ecosystem, 231 commercial UMTS/HSPA networks worldwide, and the availability of more than 700 UMTS/HSPA devices.

"Excitement is being generated in the wireless industry today as feature rich devices are introduced with user-friendly applications for entertainment, enterprise, social networking and commerce powered by UMTS/HSPA mobile broadband," said Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas. "Complete mobile connectivity through GSM technologies for customers is generating an increasing percentage of total revenue in wireless data services averaging about 20% in North America for many operators today."

In the Western Hemisphere, GSM/HSPA added a total of 115.4 million subscriptions from June 2007-June 2008, of which 8.5 million were 3G subscriptions. There were 472 million total subscriptions to GSM/HSPA networks as of the end of the 2Q 2008 throughout the Americas -- approaching half a billion subscriptions.

The number of subscriptions in Latin America continues to grow tremendously with a penetration rate of all wireless technologies reaching 72% in 2Q 2008 according to Informa. This penetration rate has resulted primarily from the growth of the GSM family of technologies with a total of nearly 354 million subscriptions and 85% share of market. CDMA subscriptions continue to decline and as of 2Q 2008 totaled 48 million, down from 59 million one year earlier.

Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas stated, "We continue seeing deployments and numerous expansions of 3G HSDPA services by GSM operators throughout Latin America coupled with increasing penetration rates. There is still a lot of growth potential for new customers and even greater opportunity with the expansion of 3G services to both post paid and prepaid users. HSDPA deployments by 25 operators in 14 countries are contributing to these improved operator revenues in value added services such as e-mail push, downloads of music and video and access to social networks."

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Keywords: LTE, western hemisphere, explosive growth, market share, 3g, subscriptions, industry research firm, americas region, 3G

By Robert Hoskins

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