A survey by the U.S. Cellular Wireless Association (pdf), found more than 233 million wireless users in the United States as of December 2006 or 76 percent of the U.S. population.
U.S. consumers bought 143 million new cellular handsets last year, spending $8.8 billion after rebates and promotions, according to NPD Group, a consumer research firm. Fourth-quarter sales, typically the highest of the year, were up 14 percent from the prior year.
The CTIA says wireless data service revenues for 2006 rose to $15.2 billion, a 77% increase over 2005, when data revenue was $8.6 billion. Wireless data revenues now total roughly 13% of all wireless service revenues.
The major handset vendors and their U.S. market share in 2006:
- Motorola (33 percent),
- LG Electronics (16 percent),
- Samsung Electronics (15 percent)
- Nokia (15 percent)
Sony Ericsson—which has ridden a wave of interest in mobile music elsewhere —did not gain a substantial chunk of U.S. market share. Sony Ericsson and Nokia have limited CDMA presence in the U.S., constraining their market share. CDMA providers Sprint & Verizon represent 60 percent of the U.S. domestic market.
Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless both posted 27-percent market share of all U.S. subscribers, though Cingular garnered 27 percent of new phone sales, besting Verizon Wireless in that category by 4 percentage points.
As of the end of 4Q-2006, there were over 100 million WCDMA subscribers around the world,” said Asia-Pacific research director Jake Saunders. “The WCDMA subscriber sector is moving particularly fast, growing 102% YoY and 16.6% QoQ.”
ABI Research says Nokia is leading the Smartphone market with a 56.4% share of the 70.9 million units shipped in 2006. Motorola occupied the second position with 8.5% market share, driven by the success of its Linux-based devices in China. In 2006, Symbian’s OS was estimated to have a 73% share of the smartphone OS market, but ABI forecasts that it will to fall to 46% by 2012, due to strong competition coming from Linux, and Windows Mobile.
There are 2 billion people worldwide with cell phones,” said Alex Muller, CEO of GPS Shopper. “Worldwide, more people are able to access the Internet via cell phones than computers.”
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