News
Issue #2002 - 46 (December 2002)
(Updated Dec. 10, 2002)

MARKET OUTLOOK & TRENDS

135 Million CDMA Users - 24 Million CDMA2000

The CDMA Development Group (CDG)  reported this month that there were nearly 135 million CDMA subscribers and 24 million CDMA2000 users worldwide at the end of the third quarter of 2002.

"CDMA is the fastest growing wireless technology and dominates the 3G market today," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "CDMA has made phenomenal progress in the past and it is well positioned for the future. In the coming years, CDMA will expand to new markets, gain market share and, with CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV, will continue to lead in delivering the most advanced 3G services around the world."

The CDMA subscriber base grew by 31 percent over the past 12 months, driven by new deployments in Asia, Latin America and Europe and the success of CDMA2000 services.

There are 80 million CDMA users in the Americas. In North America, CDMA is the dominant wireless technology with more than 58 million subscribers. Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions for CDMA. As of September 2002, there were 26 million subscribers in the Central and Latin America region, a 40 percent increase over the past year.

In Asia, the number of subscribers increased by nearly 9 million, or 21 percent, since October 2001 as China Unicom launched cdmaOne(TM) services and CDMA2000 attracted new users in Korea and Japan.

The CDMA2000 subscriber base grew by more than 10 million during 3Q 2002. Nearly 18 percent of CDMA subscribers worldwide have access to 3G CDMA2000 services today. In Korea, more than 40 percent of subscribers are using CDMA2000, twice as many as at the beginning of 2002.

The CDMA Development Group is a trade association formed to foster the worldwide development, implementation and use of cdmaOne(TM) and CDMA2000. The 110 member companies of the CDG include many of the world's largest wireless operators and equipment manufacturers. The primary activities of the CDG include development of CDMA features and services, public relations, education and seminars, regulatory affairs and international support.

For more information: http://www.cdg.org and http://www.3g.co.uk

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory: CDMA has succeeded in all markets except Europe because it was able to demonstrate its superior spectral efficiency and significant focused support from Qualcomm in feeding the silicon and software pipeline (chips and BREW). While GSM/GPRS standard is more pervasive than CDMA and offers an easy migration path from GSM, it lacks the speed and efficiency. For wireless data, this is good news. You do need faster sustainable effective speed on the link. From competitive point of view, we can afford to have two standards for the time being. GSM has made Qualcomm - who invented Qualcomm and CDMA infrastructure vendors (Ericsson, Motorola, Nortel and others) run faster and demonstrate superior performance. We expect this trend to continue. To the enterprise mobile application analysts, we say - go ahead and deploy your applications with CDMA or GSM/GPRS -whichever network offers you the better solution in your geography.

Note: This news release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 21E of Securities Exchange act of 1934 in USA. Similar provisions exist in other countries. There is no assurance that the stipulated plans of vendors will be implemented. MobileInfo does not warrant the authenticity of the information. Readers should take appropriate caution in developing plans utilizing these products, services and technology architectures.  All trademarks used in this summary are the property of their respective owners.