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GSM Still Dominates Mobile Phone Networks

GSM-HSPA has captured 72 percent of the entire cellular market in the Western Hemisphere. This represents a 6 percent increase in market share since the first quarter of 2008, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

With nearly 555 million subscriptions in the Americas at the end of the first quarter of 2009, GSM achieved an annual growth of 25 percent, 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 percent global share of market and annual growth of 22 percent.

There were 4.16 billion wireless mobile connections worldwide at the end of the first quarter of which 3.7 billion are GSM-HSPA connections.

Informa reported 329 million UMTS-HSPA subscriptions as of March 2009, already 8 percent of the global wireless market. This number will exceed 474 million by the end of 2009, 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.

The Latin America and Caribbean region is showing significant growth as the GSM market share nears 90 percent -- a 6 percent 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.

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