Fun with EMC's Latest Subscriber Numbers
>> GSM Now Accounts For Over 80% Of New Digital Subscriber Growth
For the first time since 1997 the percentage of new subscribers selecting GSM as their mobile service of choice has passed 80%. According to new figures published by EMC World Cellular Database, the total number of new mobile subscribers in the first quarter 2003 approached 51 million, with GSM accounting for almost 42 million, or 82% of new additions in this period. GSM operators are also the largest in the world with China Mobile at over 144 million, and China Unicom at almost 75 million subscribers with GSM accounting for 65 million, by the end of the first quarter 2003. Of the top 20 largest operators (by customer numbers) in the world, 15 use GSM technology, which is clear evidence of GSM's broad market acceptance, and performance in the highly competitive mobile services market.
"There has been strong GSM growth in virtually every region of the world during the first quarter of the year. We have seen excellent progress, especially in Asia Pacific, China and Latin America in the take up and growth of GSM," says Alan Hadden, President, GSA - Global mobile Suppliers Association.
China still accounts for the largest proportion of mobile growth globally, followed by Asia Pacific, Western Europe and Eastern Europe. In Asia Pacific including China, 81% of the region's growth was generated by GSM operators. In China alone, GSM growth in Q1 2003 was 14.1 million subscribers, or 87% of new additions.
A similar situation can be seen in other regions. For example, in Latin America the market is strongly benefiting from the decisions by 25 of the region's 31 TDMA operators to deploy GSM as their technology platform to support third generation (3G) services and solutions. "Brazil is one of the most hotly contested markets in Latin America, where GSM captured 51% of growth in the first quarter of this year. The success of GSM has been outstanding, taking a clear position of leadership, with both TDMA and CDMA growth declining", added Alan Hadden.
GSM also markedly increased market share in North America, by achieving 61% of net additions in first quarter 2003. "We again see how customers are benefiting from operators' decisions to migrate from TDMA to the secure GSM evolution path that delivers new, advanced mobile services as well as new data and roaming revenues," concludes Alan Hadden. "In addition, the interest and take up of new GSM data services like picture messaging, Java™ games, music downloads and now video messaging, show how GSM operators meet the growing needs of an ever expanding audience." <<
EMC now has subscriber numbers out through May end ...
gsmworld.com
CDG's numbers are only updated through March end.
cdg.org
Note that EMC shows a net decrease for CDMA subs April to May.
Possibly EMC's numbers are incomplete, or there could be a typo, but there may be some scrubbing by a few large CDMA carriers and EMC may be cross verifying with CDG.
In Q4 02 there was a wider than normal discrepancy between EMC numbers and CDG's.
CDG's numbers for the fourth quarter looked inflated to me when I first saw them published, and EMC pretty much balanced up with CDG in Q1. In fact EMC's March ending numbers for CDMA are 900,000 higher than CDG's, indicating that CDG may have scrubbed some subs out in Q1. Possibly there is still some scrubbing going on.
As for the 12 months ending March 31, EMC shows CDMA net sub adds as 35.4 million and CDG only shows 34 million net sub adds.
As a sanity check, and a check on how numbers translated into the article above, I ran the numbers for Q1 net sub adds 2 ways:
Table 1: EMC Only for all technologies
Table 2. CDG for CDMA (Q1 end only) and EMC for all other technologies
Calculating on pure net adds the numbers reported by EMC that are reflected in your referenced article work out pretty closely if I use Table 2.
I generally calculate percentage of net adds by technology on the "swing" (net adds + net subtracts) not pure net adds.
If you don't calculate on the "swing" the sum of all digital adds expressed as a percentage is greater than 100% of total subs, and although now all major digital technologies are showing growth, PDC net adds are about to go negative, and eventually IS-136 TDMA subs will eventually as well, which will affect any calculations going forward. I'm more comfortable with the number calculated on the "swing."
Looking at a single quarters numbers from EMC (or CDG) is not particularly meaningful, IMO, to spot a trend, and that is because their is constant reverification of numbers going on with attendant scrubbing by the carriers and this reflects in the quarterly estimated numbers reported by EMC and CDG but that typically starts to smooth at 5 to 6 months.
It will be interesting to see how closely EMC and CDG's numbers match up at the end of Q2. I suspect that CDG's numbers may not look too good for Q2. I don't see this as a trend. I simply think that there may have been an overstatement in Q4 02, that perhaps carried into Q1 03 and it is now being smoothed.
Table 1: Q1 2003 Subscriber Growth (EMC Only)
Net
Dec 02 Mar 02 Adds CAGR
·
Total GSM Subscribers 791.4m 833.1m 41.7m 22.8%
Total CDMA Subscribers 145.4m 155.1m 9.7m 29.5%
Total TDMA Subscribers 107.5m 109.8m 2.3m 8.8%
Total PDC Subscribers 60.1m 61.3m 1.2m 8.2%
Total WCDMA Subscribers 0.15m 0.35m 0.2m 2864.0%
Total Analg Subscribers 29.3m 26.4m (2.9m) (34.1%)
Total Wireless Subscribers 1133.9m 1186.0m 52.1m 19.7%
swing = 55.0m (+analog)
·
Q1 2003 Subscriber Net Add Percentage by Technology
·
Pure Using
"Swing"
·
GSM 80.0% 75.8%
CDMA 18.6% 17.6%
TDMA 4.4% 4.2%
PDC 2.3% 2.1%
WCDMA .3% .3%
----- -----
105.6% 100.0%
Sub deductions -5.6%
=====
100.0%
·
Table 2: Q1 2003 Subscriber Growth (EMC + CDG for CDMA Q1 end)
·
Net YOY
Dec 02 Mar 02 Adds Growth
·
Total GSM Subscribers 791.4m 833.1m 41.7m 22.8%
Total CDMA Subscribers 145.4m 154.2m* 8.8m 26.5%
Total TDMA Subscribers 107.5m 109.8m 2.3m 8.8%
Total PDC Subscribers 60.1m 61.3m 1.2m 8.2%
Total WCDMA Subscribers 0.15m 0.35m 0.2m 2864.0%
Total Anal Subscribers 29.3m 26.4m (2.9m) (34.1%)
Total Wireless Subscribers 1133.9m 1185.1m 51.3m 19.7%
swing = 54.2m (+analog)
* CDG number, not EMC
·
Q1 2003 Subscriber Net Add Percentage by Technology
·
Pure Using
"Swing"
·
GSM 81.3% 76.9%
CDMA 17.2% 16.2%
TDMA 4.5% 4.3%
PDC 2.3% 2.2%
WCDMA .3% .4%
----- -----
Total 105.6% 100.0%
Sub deductions -5.6%
=====
100.0%
·
I also calculated YOY Growth using EMC's latest numbers through
May 2003 end. I consider these "unofficial" since we have no
corresponding "official" numbers from CDG.
·
12 Month Subscriber Growth Rates (EMC)
Net YOY % of
May 02 May 03 Adds Growth Subs
·
Total GSM Subscribers 691.7m 863.6m 171.9m 24.9% 70.9%
Total CDMA Subscribers 123.7m 156.7m 33.0m 26.7% 12.9%
Total TDMA Subscribers 100.2m 111.4m 11.2m 9.6% 9.2%
Total PDC Subscribers 58.6m 61.7m 3.1m 5.1% 5.0%
Total WCDMA Subscribers 0.1m 0.5m 0.4m 400.0% .3%
Total Analg Subscribers 35.5m 24.5m (11.0m) (34.1%) 2.0%
Total Wireless Subscribers 1009.3m 1217.9m 208.6m 18.8%
swing = 219.6m (+analog)
·
12 Month Subscriber Net Add Percentage by Technology
·
Pure Using
"Swing"
·
GSM 82.4% 78.3%
CDMA 15.8% 15.0%
TDMA 5.4% 5.1%
PDC 1.5% 1.4%
WCDMA .2% .2%
----- -----
105.3% 100.0%
Sub deductions -5.3%
=====
100.0%
·
33 Month Relative Market Share of CDMA & GSM
·
QCDMA Market Share GSM Market Share
·
% of all % of digital % of all % of digital
·
01 2003 End 13.1% 13.4% 70.2% 71.8%
Q4 2002 End 12.9% 13.3% 69.7% 71.6%
Q2 2002 End 12.3% 12.7% 68.6% 71.0%
Q4 2001 End 11.7% 12.3% 65.7% 69.0%
Q2 2001 End 11.6% 12.4% 64.8% 69.4%
Q4 2000 End 11.2% 12.5% 63.3% 69.7%
Q2 2000 End 11.9% 13.9% 56.6% 66.1%
As always I could have made some typos or miscalculations in updating these numbers above using EMC's or CDG's data.
Happy 4th,
- Eric - |
