Russell Beattie

I was just checking out the The Netsize Guide 2008 report, which has a bunch of stats, polls and articles from various industry leaders in Mobility. This is probably one of those reports that's better to have in actual paper magazine form to read, but it was interesting enough to scan through just now.

At the very back of the report is the country data, beginning with the graph which I copied above, with the numbers of total cellular subscribers for the major markets around the world, and also the number of 3G subs as well. It's always nice to have the latest industry estimates for this sort of thing so you can spout them to potential investors on cue. After that is country ranking by ARPU, etc. Very nice stuff.

The thing that I was interested in seeing is the US mobile numbers - they're huge! The US has 261MM total subscribers, second only to China, and more than Germany, Italy and the UK combined. The US has 41MM 3G subs - a 16% penetration equivalent to that of UK and in the top 6 for the world - which in sheer numbers is double that of South Korea, or the total of Germany, UK, France, Spain and Portugal combined. Only Japan has more 3G subs than the U.S.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again the US mobile market is pretty awesome: Big, advanced and getting bigger and more advanced every day. Sure, we're still waiting for the odd feature like mobile digital TV and mPayments, but in terms of raw numbers? The US is definitely the place to be in mobility.

:-)

-Russ

P.S. Someone tell the people in Italy they can stop buying mobile phones now. 148% penetration? Are you kidding me? ;-)