Mobile-phone subscriptions pick up pace
The number of new mobile-phone subscribers has jumped sharply higher, surprising many analysts and underlining the continuing robustness of the industry amid the tough economic climate.
The latest government figures show that 122,572 new users signed up for services during November.
That is more than double the number that signed up in October and well above the average monthly growth for last year as a whole.
Also unusual was the split between the types of technologies customers chose.
Most of the growth for most of last year was in the newer networks using PCS technology.
In November, growth was split almost equally between PCS and the older established GSM, D-amps and CDMA technologies.
The figures reflect the market before the latest round of savage price-cutting, which took place in late December and early this month.
ABN Amro Asia analyst Joan Kiernan said the message to be drawn from these tariff reductions was 'inconsistent' with the subscriber-growth numbers.
If the market was growing so strongly, why cut prices? she asked.
A possible answer could be that most of the growth was not in the GSM sector of the market but in Hongkong Telecom's 1+1 service, which uses D-amps technology, or in Hutchison's CDMA network.
Telecom relaunched 1+1 at about this time with a generous handset offer.
It could be that the publicity and pricing of the new service spurred the market enough to create this anomaly in the numbers.
There are now 712,799 customers signed up to PCS networks and 2,044,167 on the rest.
If the market continued to grow at November's rate, the SAR would hit the three million subscriber mark near the end of this month, soon approaching the point at which every other person is a mobile-phone user.
