Boom Time For Cdma Players In India

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Boom time for CDMA players in India

The Economic Tiimes: August 25, 2004

India has recorded the fastest growth in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) with 745% growth in subscribers during 2003 and has doubled its marketshare in the country within a year. It was with the objective of discussing the issues and opportunities of this emerging and growing technology, that The Economic Times , in association with, Ericsson organized the first-ever conference on CDMA in the country, India CDMA Summit 2004, on July 12 in Mumbai.

The conference boasted of the presence of the who's who of the Indian telecom industry with high-level representation from Telecom Authority of India, Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola and China-based ZTE.

A spectrum-efficient mobile technology, CDMA is emerging as an alternative to Europe-led GSM. "While the worldwide wireless subscribers will exceed 2 billion by 2007, CDMA as a per cent of total subscribers will increase from 13% in 2003 to 19% in 2009. Asia-Pacific region currently accounts for 43% of the total CDMA subscribers. By 2009 this region will account for nearly 60% of the total CDMA market," President of Ericsson CDMA Systems-USA, Mats Granryd said.

In the Asia-Pacific region itself, India is one of the fastest growing markets for CDMA usage. About 26% of all wireless subscribers in region are CDMA/CDMA2000. At present, there are nearly 10 million subscribers of this technology in the country.

"Indian wireless market is set to gain from healthy competition fostered by regulatory initiatives like permission to bring down introductory prices of handsets by bundling of handset prices and tariffs and introduction of Calling Party Pays.

While last year the sector recorded cumulative losses worth Rs 7,000 crore, it is in profits this year," Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Pradip Baijal said.

The seminar was divided into four sessions-India: A booming CDMA Destination, CDMA Technology in India: New Choices and Challenges ahead, Global Trends in CDMA Technology and CDMA 2000 - Global Market Update.

"CDMA is poised for a big leap. Market adaptations for customized applications would act as a catalyst for this market and the data in rural areas would play a big role and low cost handsets will influence penetration to a large extent," Sanjeet Pandit, Director Business Management, Ericsson said in his presentation on ‘Opportunities for India based on CDMA global market trends'.

The major players in the wireless market in the country are Lucent, Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia and Motorola. While Ericsson has the largest marketshare of 33.35%, Lucent comes second with marketshare of 28.48%.

The event was sponsored by China-based ZTE, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems.