Nearing ubiquity
The total number of mobile connections in the world moved past the five billion mark according to new data from GSMA-owned Wireless Intelligence.
But the number of connections doesn't seem to be limited by the global population, it seems. The last billion connections took only 18 months to achieve and the report predicts that the next million could sign-up with similar speed.
You see some regions, like Western Europe, have a mobile penetration of 130 percent. That means we have more than one mobile-enabled device per person. Even Africa has a penetration of 52 percent and the five billion figure equates to a global penetration of 74 percent. The two biggest markets are China and India and these are the biggest drivers of growth.
While GSM remains the most common technology, the upgrade path to WCDMA technologies means the most growth came from the latter, with the WCDMA family accounting for 12 percent of the global total in Q2 2010, up from 8 percent in Q4 2008. There's a full breakdown in the table below.
"In Europe, operators have long switched their focus to customer retention and value share rather than customer share," said Joss Gillet, senior analyst at Wireless Intelligence. "As a result, the migration of prepaid users to contract is happening faster than in any other region.
"In Western Europe, prepaid connections declined by 2 percent year-on-year in Q1 2010 while contract connections increased by 7 percent. In North America, the situation is different since operators are using wholesale prepaid offers to counter stalling contract growth. Consequently, North American prepaid connections grew by 19 percent compared to 3 percent yearly growth for contract connections.
"Meanwhile, the strong focus on data services led to 3G connections stealing growth from 2G connections in mature markets. We are seeing a steady progress towards data-centric services and revenues, but voice services still remain the primary source of revenue."
