Thanks to India, mobile phone industry is happy

Thursday, 04 March 2004, 20:30 IST
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LONDON: The huge growth in the market for mobile telephones in India and China has spread cheer in the industry after a three-year drought during which many wireless carriers nearly collapsed. Lavish parties and bullish talk have returned to the mobile phone industry, latest industry trends reveal. "I see optimism amongst operators for the first time in two or three years," said Juha Christensen, the former head of Microsoft's mobile software unit who moved on to set up Macromedia's wireless software activities. In Europe, where the GSM mobile standard was developed, players boasted the one-billionth subscriber to a GSM network. Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin said the one billion subscribers milestone had been reached in just 10 years since the commercial launch of GSM, and the tally would rise to a couple of billion users within five to 10 years. "Is this an exciting industry? Absolutely. This is where it happens," he said. The market has dramatically improved in the past year, with consumers in emerging markets such as China and India snapping up tens of millions of cheap handsets. Choosy consumers in saturated markets such as Japan, Europe and the US have been showing appetite for colour screen phones with built-in cameras, indicating that there is, after all, a big market for mobile multimedia services. The upbeat mood was underlined by takeover efforts, after Vodafone and US rival Cingular fought over AT&T Wireless and with Dutch KPN bidding for Britain's mmO2, evidence that some operators had regained cash and courage for acquisition adventures.
Source: IANS