|
|
India Records Best-Ever Monthly Net New Subcribers
A comparison of the customer numbers for China and India for the end of July 2007 yields some interesting results. Although in real terms China is still by far the largest mobile market in the world, with 491 million subscribers to India's 189 million at the end of July, the Indian market continues to outpace the Chinese market in terms of growth. The figures are somewhat skewed by the fact that the AUSPI, one of India's regulatory bodies, has moved to including all Wireless Local Loop (WLL) customers in its definition of Mobile, as Reliance did some time back. (It is unclear at this stage whether there has been any fundamental change, or whether there has simply been a change in counting methodology.) This move has positively impacted numbers by just over 4.7 million, which goes some way towards explaining the astonishing 12.4 million net additions in July.
Click to enlarge
India vs China, monthly net additons
India vs China, CDMA customers
However, even if we factor out this adjustment, India still claims just under 7.7 million new connections, the highest figure for monthly net additions ever recorded anywhere in the world.
In yearly terms, India has gained 78.2 million new connections in the year to July 07 (including the WLL adjustment) while China claims 76.8 million. In proportionate terms, however, India is well ahead, recording a proportionate annual customer growth rate of 70.3% to the end of July, compared to China's 18.5%.
India is also ahead of China in terms of CDMA customers. It first edged ahead in December 2006, but following the disconnection of over 4m customers in March of this year owing to India's customer re-verification procedure, it dropped behind China again. However, in May it sneaked ahead again, and in June it was over 1.5 million customers in the lead. Now the gap is 7.8 million, or 3.1 million factoring out the WLL customers; either way, India has a decisive lead over China in this metric.
Posted to the site on 29th August 2007
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