GSM Market Doubles in Size in the USA

The US wireless market witnessed some dramatic changes during 2002 with GSM doubling both in subscribers and handset shipments, according to Telecom Trends International.

William Wallace, TTI's lead analyst on mobile devices and services, said that most of the GSM growth has come at the expense of TDMA and AMPS, the two technologies that are rapidly being replaced by GSM and CDMA alternatives. The decline in AMPS growth has been particularly steep, highlighting the fact the first generation wireless technology is on its way out, he said.

"These developments are pretty spectacular," Mr. Wallace said. "They represent some fundamental shifts in the marketplace stemming from the embrace of GSM by two major TDMA carriers, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless." Mr. Wallace, who authored the report, "US Mobile Handset Market - Trends and Developments," said GSM bucked the trend of the overall market slowdown by growing at a phenomenal pace.

During 2002, the US market witnessed an 11% growth in subscribers while overall the handset growth remained flat, the TTI report said. The year ended with 142 million subscribers with GSM subscribers almost doubling from 12.3 million in 2001 to 25.3 million in 2002. AMPS subscribers declined the fastest, falling to 13.6 million from 24.1 million a year earlier. TDMA subscribers fell from 38.1 million in 2001 to 34.6 million in 2002.

In case of handset shipments, the numbers are even more remarkable in terms of the market shift. Thus, AMP device shipments were only 1.2 million during the year, a less than one-third decline over shipments in 2001 when 4 million handsets were shipped. TDMA handset shipments declined by 8.6 million, going form 19.8 million in 2001 to 11.2 million in 2001. Shipments of CDMA handsets increased by only 2.4 million going from 29.3 million in 2001 to 31.7 million in 2002."

Posted to the site on 13th January 2003