180 million mobile subscribers in US, 400 million in China by 2007

The Research Room group published a free report with mobile subscription forecast s for 77 countries around the world.

Important to note that the forecasts count mobile subscriptions - not users. This is why the penetration rates may differ from other research companies penetration rates. Many countries have their own dynamics - and often this may cause to inflate or deflate the penetration rate - but for the purposes of this forecast the penetration rate is considered to be Mobile Subscriptions divided by Population times 100. Countries such as Taiwan have penetration rates above 100% - this is due to the fact that subscribers often have up to 12 active accounts. Some attempt has been made to remove the "dead" subscribers from the numbers - the numbers are often reduced to counter-act the fact that some mobile subscribers keep accounts alive to inflate their numbers. If the mobile account has not generated any revenue for more than three months then the research room does not include this account within its forecasts.

An example, in order of % of estimated population:

Canada: 18.6 million subscriptions, corresponding to 55.7%

New Zealand: 2.6 million subscriptions, corresponding to 63.5%

United States: 180 million subscriptions, corresponding to 64.4%

Australia: 16 million subscriptions, corresponding to 77.4%

United States: 180 million subscriptions, corresponding to 64.4%

UK: 54 million subscriptions, corresponding to 88.3%

Finland: 4.8 million subscriptions, corresponding to 92%

Hong Kong: 7.1 million subscriptions, corresponding to 92.3%

With a not so big penetration, but of course a very high number of subscriptions is China, with 400 million subscriptions, corresponding to only 30% of the population.