Today the PHS MoU Group announced that the global number of PHS subscribers has exceeded 100 million.

PHS (Personal Handy-phone System) is a 2G standard developed by NTT DoCoMo in 1989, but its uptake is mostly limited to a few countries in Asia.

In Japan, PHS subscriber numbers were in rapid decline, but PHS operator Willcom managed to reverse this trend in 2005 with flat-rate data and voice packages and Japan's first Windows Mobile smartfone which proved popular with business users.

Currently, Chinese PHS subscribers make up 90% of the global total and telecoms companies use the standard to set up low-cost wireless local loop systems.

PHS subscribers per country:

China 93.3m

Japan 4.9m

Taiwan 1.3m

Thailand 350k

Vietnam 200k

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 10:24 am