China & India propel mobile subscription growth by 9% to 6.3 bn

Buoyed by expanding markets in India and China, global mobile subscriptions totalled around 6.3 billion last year, with subscriptions growing at about 9 per cent year-on-year, a report by European telecom equipment maker Ericsson said.

According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, total mobile subscription in China stood at 1.26 billion, while in India it was 713 million in 2012. The net additions in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 140 million.

'Global mobile penetration reached 89 per cent in Q4 2012 and mobile subscriptions now total around 6.3 billion.However, the actual number of subscribers is around 4.4 billion, since many people have several subscriptions,' the report said. China accounted for about 22 per cent of net additions, adding around 30 million subscriptions, followed by India (11 million), Bangladesh (9 million), Indonesia (8 million), and Nigeria (5 million), it added.

'Mobile subscriptions have grown around nine per cent year-on-year and two per cent quarter-on-quarter. In Q4, mobile broadband subscriptions grew 125 million to 1.5 billion, reflecting a 50 per cent year-on-year increase,' it said.

There is a continued strong momentum for smartphone uptake in all regions, it added.

'Approximately 40 per cent of all mobile phones sold during 2012 were smartphones, compared to around 30 per cent for the full year 2011. Only around 15-20 per cent of the worldwide installed base of mobile phone subscriptions uses smartphones,' the report said.

GSM, GPRS and EDGE subscriptions grew 44 million and WCDMA and HSPA grew 70 million. Together these technologies represent 80 per cent of total net additions. That apart, LTE subscriptions grew from 14 million to 57 million in 2012.

The report expects mobile data subscriptions to increase.

'Mobile data subscriptions will grow strongly and drive the increase in data traffic, along with a continuous increase in the average data volumes per subscription,' it said.     


OVER 6 MILLION WEBSITE NAMES ADDED TO INTERNET IN LAST QUARTER OF 2012

Over six million new domain names were registered in the October-December period of 2012, taking the total number of registered domain names to 252 million worldwide, says a report.

'...more than six million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total number of registered domain names to more than 252 million worldwide across all top-level domains as of 31 December  2012,' VeriSign, the global registry operator for .com and .net said in a report. The increase of 6.1 million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 2.5 per cent over the third quarter of 2012 and marks the eighth straight quarter with more than 2 per cent growth, it added.

'Worldwide registrations have grown by 26.6 million, or 11.8 per cent, year over year,' the report said.

The .com and .net TLDs reached a combined total of approximately 121.1 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net, it added.

'As on 31 December 2012, the base of registered names in .com equalled 106.2 million names, while .net equalled 14.9 million names,' it said.

The .com and .net renewal rate for the fourth quarter of 2012 was 72.9 per cent, up slightly from 72.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2012. Renewal rates vary quarter over quarter based on the composition of the expiring name base and the contribution of specific registrars.

'During the fourth quarter of 2012, Verisigns average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 77 billion, across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 123 billion,' it said.