Asians use mobile phones more than Americans

Asians use mobile phones more than Americans

SINGAPORE (AFP): Asian cellular phone users could soon outnumber those in North America due to an explosive growth in new subscribers, officials of Swedish telecommunications group Ericsson said here Monday.

Figures released by Ericsson during the Asia Telecom '97 trade show here placed the number of cellular phones in the world at 137 million as of January this year, with 47 million in North America and 43 million in Asia.

Europe had 36 million subscribers while South America had six million.

Kurt Hellstrom, executive vice president of Telefon AB Ericsson, said Japan alone could register 10 million new subscribers in one year.

"The growth is strong all over Asia," he said, adding that he was sure the growth was "not going to be matched" elsewhere in the world.

In early 1997, Japanese mobile phone users numbered in excess of 20 million and were forecast to reach 45 million by 2000, according to Ericsson estimates.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Asia-Pacific region posted 84 percent growth in cellular subscribers in 1996, rising by over 40 million since 1990.

"The region is well-placed to benefit from the next generation of mobile technology," said ITU secretary-general Pekka Tarjanne.

"The shift to digital and micro-cellular technologies should provide a further boost to growth in the region," he added.

Lauding liberalization efforts which have brought new operators into the market, Tarjanne said "few regions of the world can claim to match Asia-Pacific in terms of sales of new telecommunications equipment, and none can match it in terms of its potential."

Out of the US$160 billion raised from privatization of telecommunications companies in the world between 1984 and 1996, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for 54 percent, he said.

In some developing countries in Asia, cellular phones are growing faster than fixed lines.

In Cambodia, cellular phones now outnumber fixed lines and in several other countries of the region like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia, "the cross-over point might not be far away," Tarjanne said.

"A footloose technology, such as mobile cellular, seems particularly appropriate for a dynamic, young and energetic region," he said.

Earlier Monday, European telecommunication giants LM Ericsson Telefon AB and Nokia Corp. announced their support for a Japanese proposal to develop a new cellular standard for the 21st century.

The cooperation effort with NTT DoCoMo of Japan pits them against North American giants which announced last week that they were developing their own standards for the so-called third generation system for cellular systems.

A joint statement by Ericsson and Nokia said they "are also lending their support to joint efforts by Asian and European authorities to standardize third-generation technology."

"It's a very tricky situation," Ake Persson, vice president for marketing and sales of Ericsson, said of the competing third- generation proposals.

He said that the two rival future systems were "fundamentally different" technologies that are currently incompatible.

Last week, North American firms Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Qualcomm and Northern Telecom announced they were working on their own system based on the code division multiple access (CDMA) system.