Re: Mobile Wireless - GPRS and Stats via MOT, ERICY, and NOK
slacker- Here's another view of the upcoming GPRS rollouts. But this view has put quite a few numbers too it. Astronomical figures if they are accurate:
-Today there are 570 million mobile phone users
-By 2002 there will be 30 million GPRS users
-By 2005 there will be 1.4 billion mobile phones users
-By 2005 there will be 1 billion(out of 1.4 billion) mobile Internet users
IMHO, which I didn't realize until now, the important line out of the story is, "...it will be at least a year before enough network infrastructure is in place to support widespread use of the [GPRS] phones." So I'm guessing this means two years as I usually double all estimated rollout times as they are predicted for any new technology. -MikeM(From Florida)
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Motorola jumps on competition
August 25, 2000
by Rex Crum
Motorola Inc. (MOT) has never liked the fact that it is the world's second-largest maker of mobile phones behind Nokia Corp. (NOK). Today the Schaumburg, Ill.-based communications giant said it would jump ahead of Nokia, and all its other competitors, in at least one mobile area by the end of the year.
Motorola announced it would have the first Internet GPRS mobile phone on the market by the fourth quarter of this year. If all goes as planned, Motorola's GPRS phone would be on sale at least a few months earlier than Nokia and Ericsson Telephone Co. (ERICY).
GPRS -- which stands for general packet radio service -- is one of the third generation, or 3G, technologies being developed to connect wireless devices to the Internet. The technology is an enhancement to the GSM standard used in Europe and is supposed to allow data to be sent and received continuously over wireless systems for services such as browsing the Web and transferring files of information.
Motorola made the announcement today in Sweden and said the first GPRS networks are set to be established in Scandinavia by the end of the year. Ericsson has said its first GPRS phones will be available in the first quarter of 2001 and Nokia says its phone will be out my midyear.
The market for GPRS is considered to be one of the most crucial for wireless phone makers and infrastructure developers. Some studies estimate that by 2002, there will be close to 30 million GPRS phones in use.
By comparison, Ericsson estimates that there are 570 million mobile phone users today, and that the number of users will increase to 1.4 billion in 2005. Ericsson also anticipates that there will be 1 billion mobile Internet users in the next five years.
However, analysts and industry officials say that even if Motorola does have the first GPRS phones available, it will be at least a year before enough network infrastructure is in place to support widespread use of the phones. |
