NEW YORK-Carriers worldwide acquired about 54.7 million new subscribers last quarter, down 5.9 percent from the same period of 2001, bringing the total to nearly 1.132 billion and penetration to 19 percent, reported FastTrack Wireless Inc., a New York-based market forecasting firm.
Globally, net additions for the year were 173 million, down from 228 million in 2001, “as the economic slump and industry saturation took their toll,” the consulting firm said.
Last year, almost 75 percent of net customer additions came from outside of Western Europe and North America. Asia-Pacific countries, excluding Japan and South Korea, had the strongest growth rate, 35 percent, followed by Eastern Europe, at 34 percent, and Africa-Middle East at 30 percent. Latin American markets, hampered by an economic downturn, grew by only 17 percent.
Introduction of 2.5G services, new feature-rich handsets, promotional campaigns by operators and favorable pricing helped spike a particularly strong 73-percent growth rate in North America between the third and fourth quarters of 2002. Worldwide, the sequential growth in net additions was 35 percent, “suggesting a more positive growth environment could be returning to the wireless services industry,” FastTrack Wireless said.
However, consumer acceptance of next-generation technologies, which were widely introduced in 2002, “has not been overwhelming . and the full force of the new advanced networks is still at least two years away,” the market research firm said.
At year-end, only 1.4 percent of worldwide GSM customers used GPRS services, while CDMA 1x users accounted for 17 percent of CDMA subscriptions.
With U.S. carriers serving as the primary drivers of CDMA growth, this RF technology continued to gain market share last year, comprising 13 percent of all subscribers worldwide. In North America, CDMA last year rose to 41 percent of the subscriber base from 36 percent in 2001. FastTrack projects CDMA technology to account for 45 percent of all North American customers by the end of 2007, largely because of Verizon Wireless Inc.’s market-share gains. Verizon closed 2002 with 22.9-percent market share.
“Assuming events in Iraq result in minimal disruption to the world economy, we see modest growth returning to the wireless services industry in 2003,” said Ed Matluck, chief executive officer of FastTrack Wireless.
“If hostilities break out . consumers could simply stop spending for a prolonged period of time, as they did during Desert Storm and the 2000 (presidential) election recount.”
Barring this worst-case scenario, the market research firm projects the number of wireless subscribers worldwide will grow by 11 percent this year, down from 18 percent in 2002, and reach 1.26 billion by year-end.
“While global economic growth has been weak, there are signs that the economies of both North America and Western Europe are returning to modest growth this year. This growth should also fuel a recovery in other regions of the world,” FastTrack Wireless said.
