Digital Lifescapes

The cellular mobile communications market continues to attract new subscribers within the African continent -- which in turn is helping to fuel regional and local socioeconomic development. In 3Q-2012, the continent's 54 countries and 1.08 billion people have accumulated 821 million mobile network subscriptions -- that's up 16.9 percent year-on-year, resulting in a cellular subscription penetration of 76.4 percent. In the first quarter of 2013, it's now forecast that cellular phone penetration will eclipse 80 percent, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Given the fact that a significant percentage of prepaid phone users maintain more than one active prepaid mobile subscription to minimize interconnection charges, there is still subscriber growth to be had. "While Western Europe languishes with barely positive overall growth quarter-on-quarter, Africa managed to generate 4.2 percent growth in the same period," said Marina Lu, research asso...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research , the global mobile phone services industry concluded 2010 with 5.5 billion subscriptions. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for 53 percent (2.9 billion) of that total. One-third of this can be attributed to the huge 2G market in India -- another one-third to China. As of December 2010, China had 860 million subscribers, although 3G subscriptions accounted for fewer than 50 million, or roughly 5.5 percent of the total. "While there are wide differentials in disposable income, it is still surprising how slow China's 3G rate of growth has been," said ABI Research practice director Neil Strother. China's literacy rates are high, familiarity with the Internet is also high through PC use in extended families as well as ubiquitous Internet cafes. And yet, 3G adoption has been muted. At the end of 2010, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA subscriber base stood at more than 20 million, China Unicom’s WCDMA had 14 million ...

The 3GPP family of technologies, which includes LTE, continue to lead the mobile broadband wireless industry in the Americas -- adding 50 million new subscriptions in 2010 and reaching a total of over 116 million UMTS-HSPA connections at the end of the year. According to the latest market study by Informa Telecoms & Media, with the addition of more than 80 million new connections in 2010, GSM-HSPA has widened its leadership margin in market share securing its position as the umber one technology in the Americas region. The market share for GSM-HSPA mobile connections in Latin America and the Caribbean reached 94 percent, adding 66 million new connections in 2010. Of those new connections in the region, 22 million or one-third of all new connections were UMTS-HSPA mobile broadband. "The availability of wireless services in Latin America and the Caribbean has already reached 96 percent penetration and data has grown 14 times faster than basic voice services during 2010, ...

Infonetics Research released the results of their latest market study which provides market size, analysis and forecasts for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and equipment by technology, region and vertical. "From a well-established base over GSM built up over the last decade, the embedded mobile M2M market is now poised for rapid acceleration, driven by new mobile devices, applications, services and providers, combined with the availability of higher speed networks," says Richard Webb at Infonetics Research. Demand is rising for mobile M2M applications, such as smart energy monitoring and intelligent traffic, backed by government policy and funding, which is helping to create a virtuous growth cycle for the embedded mobile market. Highlights from the Infonetics market study include: - Worldwide revenue for embedded mobile modems for M2M applications is forecast to more than triple in 2010 over 2009, and to continue growing strongly through at least 2014, at a 66...

3GPP mobile broadband technology (UMTS-HSPA) grew by 11.9 million new subscriptions, of the total (net) 16.3 million mobile subscriptions added in the second quarter 2010 throughout the Americas, according to the latest report from 3G Americas . 3GPP represented 73 percent of the total (net) new connections in the mobile industry in North, Central and South America in the second quarter. "The Americas was the world's fastest-growing region for UMTS-HSPA subscriptions in the year ending June 2010 and helped the technology break through the half-billion milestone to reach 535 million subscriptions worldwide during the second quarter, representing 11 percent of total global mobile subscriptions, up from 9 percent in the second quarter of 2009," said Mike Roberts, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. Only GSM and UMTS-HSPA realized new subscription gains in the Western Hemisphere during the second quarter. GSM added close to 7 million new connections, whil...