The GSM family of wireless technologies — GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA — added more than 112 million new customers in Q3 2005, increasing its global market share to 77.6% with more than 1.6 billion customers, according to 3G Americas.
3G Americas notes that with 381 million customer additions since Q3 2004, GSM added more new customers in the one-year period than the entire customer base of any other mobile digital technology. Some additional highlights:
- The GSM family of technologies is used by more than 670 mobile wireless service providers in 212 countries and territories
- The Western hemisphere added more than 84.5 million new GSM customers between Q3 2004 and Q3 2005.
- GSM claims a 41% market share in the Americas and an annual growth rate of 90%.
- GSM holds a 47% market share in the Latin American region, followed by TDMA with 26% and CDMA with 24.7%. The top five GSM markets in the region as of September 2005 were Brazil with 38.1 million GSM customers, followed by Mexico (22.6 million), Colombia (10.8 million), Argentina (7.5 million) and Chile (6.1 million).
- In the United States and Canada, the new customers added for GSM over a one-year period through Q3 2005 totaled 26 million versus the market leader, CDMA, which added 14.9 million new customers.
- More than 100 operators in 65 countries have launched commercial EDGE networks, with another 83 networks in various deployment stages. These operators represent more than 870 million customers within their current subscriber base. Additionally, UMTS is demonstrating even more growth than GSM at the same point of maturation.
- At the end of Q3 2004, there were 11 million UMTS customers worldwide, nearly 17 million at the start of this year, and UMTS customers have more than doubled to nearly 35 million at the end of Q3 2005 compared to more than 17 million CDMA 1xEV-DO according to the UMTS Forum (as of September 6).
- To date, there are 92 operators offering commercial UMTS service around the world, with another 70 operators either pre-commercial, in deployment, or with planned UMTS networks. This makes UMTS the leading 3G technology today based on the number of operators, the number of customers and the anticipated market potential due to operator commitments.
Data is based on figures from Informa Telecoms & Media World Cellular Information Service (WCIS).
http://www.3gamericas.org/English/statistics/index.cfm