market trends
The WCDMA market is growing around the world. In Western Europe, net subscriber additions are moving rapidly to WCDMA and in the June 2006 quarter, WCDMA constituted an estimated 41 percent of the handset shipments and 62 percent of the handset revenue.1 This was also the first quarter in which the overall volume of estimated WCDMA handset revenue surpassed that of GSM in Western Europe.
BREW is also gaining traction in WCDMA markets. In the United Kingdom, O2 announced the first launch of uiOne on their ICE phone, which gives users the ability to download and reconfigure the user interface. And this year Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) in Italy and Zapp Mobile in Romania were the first European wireless operators to announce deployments of the full BREW system.
The India market had another strong year, thanks in part to Qualcomm’s market-leading efforts to drive down handset costs. CDMA2000 is changing this landscape by offering revenue-generating data services in sub-$50 handsets. As evidence of our progress on this front, CDMA devices accounted for an estimated 53 percent of all handsets in the sub-$50 tier, in the first half 2006.2
In China, the world’s largest wireless market, seven wireless equipment manufacturers are now Qualcomm WCDMA chipset customers.
1 Based on estimates from Strategy Analytics, Yankee Group and Qualcomm.
2 Yankee Q2, 2006 India Handset Analysis report.
