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.