The total number of cellular connections worldwide crossed 2 billion by mid september 2005 reports wirless intelligence. The growth rate is impressive - after clocking up 1 billion in 2002, 20 years after cellular was first launched, the 2nd billion came up in just 3 years, making it the fastest growing technology at that time. 
The GSM family of technologies, which includes W-CDMA, reaches its own milestone this month of 1.5 billion subscribers and it has 78% of the world market. One third of humanity has a mobile phone today. GSM world points out that in many countries the cellular market is now maturing. There are several cases – such as Sweden, Italy, Austria, UK – where the market penetration is over 100% of the population. The opportunity in such countries is about trading up to new phones and new network services, such as 3G. The bulk of the new growth now is coming from large, less well-developed markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. India alone clocked a subscription close to 60 million by the end of July 2005 and is adding a minimum of 2 million new subscriptions every month. How do things look moving forward ? The cellular industry is expecting to ship around 750 million new phones this year. The cellular market is forecast to continue to grow at a high rate, although slower than recent years. Ovum estimates that the next billion subscription will take another five years The mobile easily qualifies to be the fastest technology ever adapted by mankind with a scale in excess of a billion users.
Category :Mobiles
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