CDMA Subscriber Base Passes 120 Million Mark

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has said that there were more than 120 million CDMA subscribers worldwide at the end of the first quarter of 2002; of the 120 million, nearly 8 million were using CDMA2000 1X. The CDMA subscriber base has grown by 30 million, or 33% in the past year.

"CDMA continues to expand rapidly around the world and is leading in 3G adoption," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "The upcoming months look very promising for CDMA, and we expect to see a significant increase in subscribers with the continued commercial deployment of 3G CDMA2000 services."

The largest CDMA subscriber base was in North America, where there were nearly 53 million users, representing more than 60% of the total number of subscribers in the region. Latin America reached more than 22 million subscribers, a 39% growth over the past year, and CDMA penetration in Asia grew to nearly 44 million subscribers. CDMA2000 subscribers are growing at a rate of more than 1 million per month.

Taking into account Qualcomm's own figures for handset shipments this year, then there is a real chance that the subscriber base will pass 200 million by the end of this year.'"

Posted to the site on 23rd May 2002