Interesting subscriber numbers, part 2

Both the GSA and 3G Americas report that there are now around 50m WCDMA subscribers, and gush enthusiastically about how quickly the number is ramping up.

There's some rather dodgy-seeming maths (or at least over-zealous PR spin) from the GSA, though, saying that "3G/WCDMA Takes 30% Share in Western Europe" ... which seems to stem from the (fairly independent, in my view) numbers of total net subscriber additions in Europe (about 44m) and the total number of new 3G subscribers (13.9m).

Consider me a cynic, but doesn't that imply that all these 13.9m people were "net additions", rather than people simply upgrading (or churning) from their previous 2G service & handset? The only difference is that you need a new SIM card if you swap to a 3G phone.

I'd be pretty surprised if more than 5-10% of completely-new arrivals to the cellular market chose to jump straight to 3G, especially as most newcomers will be on prepay tariffs unlikely to be available on 3G phones.

Mind you, with 3GSM next week, I doubt that this is the worst case of PR hyperbole we'll see in February....