Western Europe net additions Q2 2006: WCDMA growth softens

In June 2006 we reported on the high share of Western European net additions going onto WCDMA - at 95% this marked a significant shift from the previous year where it had been around 50%. Here we find that trend softened in Q2, mostly because of a lower level of promotion of WCDMA in some countries and some recovery in sales of GSM-only devices. Although WCDMA has made rapid progress, especially in the last two quarters, we estimate that it is still only around 25% of gross additions so is building market share relatively slowly at present.