14 DAY TRIAL // Considering that the population of the Earth is around 6 billion inhabitants, we can say without mistaking that a third is already benefiting from cell phone services.
Informa Telecoms & Media has recently published a study which shows that the number of cell phone subscribers will reach this year 2.14 billion users. By mid 2005, the number of cell phone subscriptions will reach 1.8 billion, and if last year's growing rate continues (in 2004, 354 million new subscriptions were purchased), at the end of 2005, the forecast might prove to be correct.
The main reason for this accelerated growing trend is the extensive implementing of mobile terminals on emergent markets, where there a lot of potential subscribers. To achieve this, cell phone producers and operators have proposed different price policies and entry-level phones which are either offered with the subscription or have very small prices.
In Russia, the market has grown last year with 89%, and in China there already over 400 million subscribers. Indonesia is another market with an impressive growing rate and experts estimate that by 2006 there will be over 50 million subscribers.
On mature markets like: Italy, Sweden, Hong Kong or Great Britain the penetration rate has exceeded 100%, and Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal are also close to achieving the same performance.