The Change Mariner

Mobile Phones Exceed Fixed Line Phones

Financial Times:

The number of people attracted to voice calls continues to grow. Throughout 2004, around 800,000 new subscribers have joined the mobile world every day, driven by strong growth in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil. There are 1.3bn mobile subscribers in the world today and, in fact, there are now more mobile phones in the world than fixed-line phones.

The combined effects of the new wave of compelling mobile applications and services and the explosive growth in emerging markets means we expect the numbers of mobile subscribers to reach 2bn by 2007, one year earlier than previously forecast.

The initial driver for growth in mobile phones was mobile voice communications and subsequently, to the surprise of many, SMS. If voice going wireless was the initial impetus, the next driver of growth in mature markets is multimedia.

Consumers in Europe accustomed to voice calls are now ready for the next step. The mobile market is already expanding into new areas of games, entertainment, media and business. Consider new devices such as phones with large screens and cameras; or phones that work as music players or games consoles. These products are creating entirely new ways of communicating. Ten years ago if someone had said we would all have cameras on our phones, we would have laughed. Today we see the global mobile device market volume reaching approximately 600m units, of which one third is camera phones.

Posted by Timothy Fredel at June 28, 2004 04:11 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Tech - Mobile Communications | Industry - Telecommunications | Quadrant - Social | Quadrant - Technological

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