3G Market penetration

By June 2007, the 200 millionth 3G subscriber had been connected of which 10 million were in Nepal and 8.2 million in India. This 200 millionth is only 6.7% of the 3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide. (When counting CDMA2000 1x RTT customers—max bitrate 72% of the 200kbit/s which defines 3G—the total size of the nearly-3G subscriber base was 475 million as of June 2007, which was 15.8% of all subscribers worldwide.) In the countries where 3G was launched first – Japan and South Korea – 3G penetration is over 70%.^[17] In Europe the leading country^[when?] for 3G penetration is Italy with a third of its subscribers migrated to 3G. Other leading countries^[when?] for 3G use include Nepal, UK, Austria, Australia and Singapore at the 32% migration level.

According to ITU estimates,^[18] as of Q4 2012 there were 2096 million active mobile-broadband^[vague] subscribers worldwide out of a total of 6835 million subscribers—this is just over 30%. About half the mobile-broadband subscriptions are for subscribers in developed nations, 934 million out of 1600 million total, well over 50%. Note however that there is a distinction between a phone with mobile-broadband connectivity and a smart phone with a large display and so on—although according^[19] to the ITU and informatandm.com the USA has 321 million mobile subscriptions, including 256 million that are 3G or 4G, which is both 80% of the subscriber base and 80% of the USA population, according^[18] to ComScore just a year earlier in Q4 2011 only about 42% of people surveyed in the USA reported they owned a smart phone. In Japan, 3G penetration was similar at about 81%, but smart phone ownership was lower at about 17%.^[18] In China, there were 486.5 million 3G subscribers in June 2014,^[20] in a population of 1,385,566,537 (2013 UN estimate)