North American Customers Top Quarter Billion Mark

Mobile customer numbers in North America topped the quarter-billion mark in Q4 2006, as expected, to end the quarter at 251.7m. Of these, 92.6% or 233m were in the United States and 18.6m or 7.4% were in Canada. In addition to these two macroscopic parts, North America also has two microscopic members - Greenland and St. Pierre and Miquelon - where the remaining 56,000 customers in the region at the end of 2006 were to be found. These two markets in aggregate were by a small margin the fastest growing in 2006, with a 14.0% increase, against 12.1% in the USA dn 10.1% in Canada.

Despite the fact that customer numbers in the North American market crossed a signifcant boundary in the fourth quarter of 2006, North America continues to significantly underperform not only the world market but all other world regions. Overall annual customer growth in North America was 11.92%, against 23.98% globally, whilst overall quarterly growth was just 3.56%, against 6.32% globally.

North America contributed just 9.3% of the world's mobile customers at the end of 2006, against 10.3% at the end of 2005, the fall down to the fact that the region accounted for only 5.1% of the world's customer growth during the year - exactly on a par with the proportion of the world's population who reside in the region.

The following charts show the distribution in North America of population, mobile customers and mobile customer growth in the quarter and year to 31st December 2006.

As the charts show, the USA continues to outperform relative to its standing in terms of population and overall customer base size, both in the quarter and the year to 31st December. However, this has as much to do with the underperformance of Canada as anything else.

Precisely nine in every ten North Americans is a resident of the United States, whilst 92.6% of the continent's mobile customers were located in the States at the end of 2006. During the year, over 25m mobile connections were added to the count in the United States , contributing 93.63% of the total, whilst only 1.7m were added in Canada.

The discrepancy in proportionate annual growth rates was only 2pp, as we have seen, and the weighting towards the United States here is almost entirely down to the difference in penetration rates between the two countries. At the end of 2006, the number of mobile connections in the United States as a proportion of the number of heads of population was 77.7%, whilst in Canada was 21.7pp behind this - or more than two and a half years if the progress of the USA is anything to go by. Despite an acceleration in the rate of increase of penetration in Canada through 2006, overall progress over the year was just 4.66pp - less than the 5.17pp added in 2005 and the 4.72pp added in 2004. The United States' progress in 2006 was also less than that recorded in both previous years, although the increases have been a consistent 3pp in excess of those in Canada.

This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World. To download a sample issue of the Briefing in PDF format, please click here. For more information including full subscription pricing, please visit The Mobile World"

Posted to the site on 19th April 2007