NA 3Q06 mobile roundup

NA is the only world region where CDMA is the technology market leader. It is quite normal as the technology is born there. Today, CDMA technology accounts for 50% of the overall NA cellular market by customers, with GSM following with about 38% and AMPS/TDMA with remaining 12%. The first two technologies continue to grow, while AMPS/TDMA is loosing ground mainly to the benefit of GSM.

CdmaOne (the first standard) has yet just above 7m subscribers in NA but is declining, while 2.5G (CDMA 2000 1x ) has already a long story and over 96m subscribers there. 3G CDMA2000 EV-DO subscribers account for about 19m, a growth rate of 500% in 12 months, dwarfing the embryonic W-CDMA base of about 300k users of the Cingular WCDMA network. 2G and 2.5G GSM world account for about 93m subscribers, with Cingular, T-Mobile USA and Rogers Wireless being the only GSM operators of any size.