India overtakes China in adding new mobile users

Indian telecom operators added the highest number of new cellular users in the world in a single month in August.

With 5.9 million new mobile users, India has beaten China, which added 5.19 million new cellular users in the same period. Other countries in the top five include Russia with 3.6 million new mobile subscribers, Brazil with 2 million additions and the Philippines where 1.9 million new cellular subscribers were added in August.

Global analysts Wireless Intelligence reports that the last half billion cellular subscribers had come in a record time of 12 months and has been mainly added in the very high-growth emerging markets of China, India and Russia. According to Wireless Intelligence, the global mobile industry has been growing at around 40 million subscribers per month, which is the highest volume of growth that the market has ever seen. The share of the Asia Pacific region in this growth is 41 per cent with India and China alone accounting for 25 per cent of the total subscriber growth worldwide over the last year.

Going forward, it is estimated that the cellular mobile subscribers will grow by another 500 million to reach 3 billion by the end of 2007. As per experts, the contribution by India to this growth would be the maximum and is estimated to be 80 million new cellular subscribers.