Cellular connections reach 3 billion

During early August 2007 the number of cellular connections worldwide will reach 3 billion - faster than we forecast when the 2.5 billion milestone was reached in September 2006. That means that the last half billion have joined in record time. The bulk of the growth came from Asia Pacific, and its share of the world's cellular growth is increasing. Although GSM is still dominant in the world's cellular growth, the technology mix is changing noticeably with an increasing share for the WCDMA family and the CDMA 1X family of higher speed cellular. We forecast that the next half billion will be added slightly more slowly, so that we reach 3.5 billion by the end of 2008.