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72% Share of
Market for GSM Family of Technologies in Western
Hemisphere
Bellevue, Washington
3G Americas, a wireless industry trade
association representing the GSM family of
technologies including LTE, today announced that
GSM-HSPA has captured 72% of the entire cellular
market in the Western Hemisphere. This represents
a 6% increase in market share since the first
quarter of 2008, according to Informa Telecoms
& Media’s World Cellular Information
Service. With nearly 555 million subscriptions in
the Americas at the end of the first quarter of
2009, GSM achieved an annual growth of 25%,
adding 110 million new connections in 12 months.
On a global basis, GSM and UMTS-HSPA added 680.7
million subscriptions in the year ending March
2009, representing 89% global share of market and
annual growth of 22%, according to Informa. There
were 4.16 billion wireless cellular connections
worldwide at the end of the first quarter of
which 3.7 billion are GSM-HSPA connections.
Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas stated,
"Even in these challenging economic times,
GSM-HSPA operators are adding significant numbers
of subscribers. Operators continue to invest in
evolving networks to 3G services and beyond to
meet the growing mobile broadband demand by their
customers."
Informa reported 329 million UMTS-HSPA
subscriptions as of March 2009, already 8% of the
global wireless market. This number will exceed
474 million by the end of 2009, according to the
analyst firm’s forecasts, and one billion in
the year 2012. There are 284 commercial UMTS-HSPA
networks today, including four operators who have
already deployed HSPA+ with peak theoretical
throughput speeds of 21 Mbps on the downlink.
With more than 120 operators expected to someday
deploy Long Term Evolution (LTE), the next step
in the 3GPP evolution for GSM operators, several
commercial contracts have already been awarded.
Chris Pearson commented, "All roads lead to
LTE’ is rapidly becoming the market reality
as both 3GPP and non-3GPP operators plan their
commercial LTE networks. There are a total of 16
expected commercial deployments of LTE by
GSM-HSPA and CDMA operators within the next 20
months."
The Latin America and Caribbean region is showing
significant growth as the GSM family of
technologies’ market share nears 90% - a 6%
increase over the last 12 months. The GSM family
of technologies added 99 million subscriptions in
the Latin America and Caribbean region as of
March 2009, with the total subscriber base of 428
million for GSM-HSPA.
"It has been less than two and a half years
since the first commercial launch of HSDPA
services in Latin America and the Caribbean, and
today EDGE and HSPA networks are available in 23
countries in the region," stated Erasmo
Rojas, Director of Latin America and the
Caribbean for 3G Americas. "There are
already more than 6 million subscriptions for
UMTS-HSPA; operators are experiencing an increase
in their data revenues as a result, and customers
are enjoying the added benefits of mobile
broadband with good coverage, high speeds, and a
full portfolio of sophisticated devices and
applications." |
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