The latest mobile subscriber forecasts from ABI Research show that worldwide GSM subscriber growth is slowing and is expected to stop by the middle of next year. However, 3G subscriptions are increasing, with 2009 seeing year-on-year mobile broadband growth of 43%. At the end of December 2009, there were 271 million mobile broadband subscribers worldwide.
Overall, global cellular subscription numbers passed 4.35 billion at the end of 2009, a 10.4% increase from 2008. Global cellular penetration is now estimated to be 66% – although this varies between 140% in Western Europe, 93% in North America and 52.5% in the Asia-Pacific region.