3G Subscribers in the Asia-Pacific Region
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Customers, EOP by Technology
3G Customers, EOP by Technology
The number of W-CDMA mobile customers in Asia Pacific exceeded 50m in late January 2007, to end Q1 2007 at 56.5m. The total number of net additions accounted for by the technology in the first quarter of 2007 amounted to 8.04m, which is a new record after 8.03m new connections were established in the fourth quarter of 2006. At the end of March this year, 5.1% of the total Asia Pacific customer base was constituted by W-CDMA connections, up from 3.5% a year earlier.
Together, GSM and W-CDMA customers made up 83.7% of the Asia Pacific total in Q1 2007, up from 82.6% in Q4 2006 and 80.6% in Q1 2006. It is no surprise that as the W-CDMA base becomes more established, so the proportionate growth rate continues to fall, declining from 21.4% in Q1 2006 to 19.9% in Q4 2006 to 16.6% in Q1 2007 - although this remains the fastest growth rate of any technology in the region. Whilst the GSM customer base in the region saw its strongest quarterly growth rate for more than four years in Q1 2007 of 7.2%, this did not quite offset the fall in the W-CDMA growth rate, and precipitated a very small decline in the quarter on quarter increase in customer numbers for the GSM/W-CDMA family from 7.78% in Q4 2006 to 7.76% in Q1 2007.
More than three quarters of Asia Pacific's W-CDMA customers - 76.5% to be precise - were accounted for by Japan alone at the end of Q1 2007, down from 78% at the end of last year and 91% in 2005. Of the 23.3% of the W-CDMA base in Asia Pacific made up of non-Japanese customers, 6.8% (3.8m) was accounted for by Australia, 5.8% by Taiwan, 3.6% by Indonesia, 2.7% by Hong Kong, 1.9% by Singapore and the 2.8% by other markets. CDMA-based 3G customers were more numerous and widespread, totalling 136m by the end of March 2007 if 1x as well as 1x EV-DO connections are included. However, growth slowed to an all-time low of just 3.8% in Q1 2007 amongst this part of the customer base, from 8.2% in Q4 2006, largely as a result of the disconnection of more than 4m CDMA2000 1x customers in India by Reliance.
Whilst the one-off cull by Reliance will not unduly worry supporters of CDMA technology, other recent developments may well do so. Two of the three operators in South Korea, which was the world's only pure CDMA market, have recently launched commercial HSDPA enabled W-CDMA networks, and recorded net additions of more than 0.6m customers between them in the first four months of this year. Telstra in Australia has announced that its CDMA network will be shut down completely by the end of 2008 in favour of its "Next-G" W-CDMA based 3G service at 850MHz, whilst neighbouring CDMA exponent Telecom New Zealand has been forced to meet the demise of its Australian roaming capability with an announcement that it too is to build a W-CDMA network.
In India, CDMA's days are numbered if Reliance follows through its plan to eventually migrate its base to GSM technology. In China, growth in Unicom's CDMA base has consistently underperformed that in its GSM base for the last seven quarters. All this will make life increasingly harder for the pure CDMA operators who remain committed to the technology, particularly for the smaller operators in markets like Indonesia and Vietnam.
Roaming capability will increasingly become an issue as economies in the region develop, most particularly for corporate subscribers, but the more significant effect is likely to be that on handset prices and availability for lower-tier users. Whilst the CDMA industry has claimed victories relating to the provision of low-cost handsets to the mass market in the region in the past, with dwindling support amongst the largest operators in the region, volume effects are likely to make this ever harder - and perhaps eventually impossible - to achieve.
Posted to the site on 4th July 2007
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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