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7th August 2003

The next five years will see a dramatic slowing of worldwide cellular subscriber growth, reports In-Stat/MDR. However, despite the fact that there has been a lot of fuss about the "catastrophic slowdown" in subscriber growth, there will be more than 931 million new subscribers over the next five years. By 2007, the total worldwide wireless population will exceed 2 billion subscribers.

A recent report released by the high-tech market research firm finds that while China, in the Eastern Asia region, continues to lead the world in overall subscriber growth, the new percentage growth leaders are found in Southern Asia and Southeast Asia. "It is rather remarkable that the fastest numerically growing country, China, is trailing Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East in Compound Annual Growth Rate," said Ken Hyers, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "However, the fact that Western Europe and Scandinavia bring up the rear, as they did in previous 2002 to 2006 forecasts, should be no surprise."

In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
-- Western Europe's growth virtually stops during In-Stat/MDR's 2002-2007 forecast period, with a CAGR of 1.2%. This can be expected, as the penetration rate in 2007 will be 83.6%.
-- CDMA will continue to be the single most dominant airlink in the United States throughout the forecast period. TDMA will be phased out, in favor of GSM, and by the end of the forecast period, TDMA networks will no longer be operational in the United States.
-- Analog will be completely phased out of Western Europe by 2004, and does not expect CDMA to make any inroads in Western Europe. By the end of the forecast period, Western European subscriber growth will have reached near saturation levels, resulting in anemic subscriber growth. UMTS subscriber growth will come at the expense of GSM.
-- In Europe, overall, GSM's overall market share will decline, from 99.1% in 2002 to 91.4% in 2007. In-Stat/MDR continues to believe that UMTS will not achieve significant market share during this forecast period.
-- Despite NTT DoCoMo's strong support for FOMA in Japan, the service has been plagued with teething problems during rollout, and faces stiff competition for KDDI's AU. NTT DoCoMo will not be able to leverage its dominant Share-Of-Market (SOM) vis-a-vis FOMA to surpass AU before 2006.
-- Throughout In-Stat/MDR's forecast period, the annual subscriber growth will average over 186 million.

The report, "Event Horizon: Two Billion Mobile Subscribers by 2007. 2003 Subscriber Forecast" (#IN0301117GW), contains worldwide subscriber forecasts from 2002 (actuals) through 2007. The data is presented in multiple formats, including country-by-country and region-by-region subscriber forecasts, and region-by-region airlink forecasts. Major regions include Southern Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Asia, Oceania, North America, Caribbean, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Middle East, Far East and Africa. Airlink data includes Analog, CDMA, TDMA, GSM, iDEN (United States only) and UMTS/WCDMA. Airlink data is presented by region, and in some cases, by country.