Ovum has predicted 2.3 million 3G subscribers in Australia by the end of 2006, which would account for around 10% of the user base. At the end of June it was 8% of the market (1.6M customers) up from 3.2% at the end of June 2005 — largely because 3 Australia migrated the bulk of its CDMA customers to its WCDMA network. “Quickening migration to 3G services is a global trend: while pacesetters such as Japan now have a majority of subscribers on 3G networks, other markets had been slow to follow. In 2006 this changed: in Western Europe net additions to WCDMA accounted for a staggering 95% of total regional net additions in the first quarter. In Hong Kong, by the end of the second quarter 14% of the market had a WCDMA subscription; in Singapore this was 11%.”
On the surface this is good for mobile content providers, but Ovum isn’t overly excited…”For the majority of mobile phone owners, (non-messaging) mobile data usage is not habitual, and it can still be (very) expensive. This makes it questionable whether the network effect of a wider 3G base will deliver much financial gain.”
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