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Bright future for 3.5 G (HSDPA)
July 18, 2006;
More than 300 million 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers in 2011, despite initial lack of devices.

The number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers worldwide will boom more than ten-fold from 2.5 million in 2006 to more than 300 million in 2011, but market growth in 2006-07 will be restrained by a lack of compelling devices, according to Future Mobile Broadband: HSPA, EV-DO, WiMAX & LTE, a new Strategic Report from Informa Telecoms & Media.

"A lack of compelling devices and content led to delayed launches and slow take-up of WCDMA and EV-DO services, and early HSDPA and EV-DO Revision A services are expected to suffer from the very same problems," says Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of the Future Mobile Broadband Strategic Report.

Saadi notes that most HSDPA services are launching with only PC cards and notebooks, although a number of early handsets are also arriving. "However it is striking that as of June no major vendor has unveiled plans for EV-DO Rev. A handsets, although data cards are on the way."

A lack of a wide range of compelling handsets will slow mass-market takeup of 3.5G mobile broadband services in 2006-07, but handsets will start to mature in 2008, leading to a sharp increase in 3.5G handset sales and subscribers in 2008-09. By 2011 85% of 3.5G devices sold will be handsets, and the remaining 15% will be notebooks and PC cards.

3.5G mobile broadband subscribers are defined as subscribers using services based on HSDPA, HSUPA, EV-DO Revision A or EV-DO Revision B.

To view graph click here.

Source: Informa.

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