Mais Telefones

Brazilians went on a mobile phone subscription spree last year. TeleGeography reports that Brazil had 68.6 million mobile phone subscribers in the end of March, for a year-over-year increase of 40 percent. That amounts to about 37 percent of the total population—considerably less than the approximately 60 percent cell phone penetration in the United States or the more than 100 percent cell-phone-per-capita numbers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sourcing Brazilian regulator Anatel, TeleGeography said that an overwhelming majority—80 percent—of Brazil’s total mobile customers were pre-paid, as opposed to having provider contracts. Operators were fairly evenly split between GSM (38 percent), TDMA (32 percent), and CDMA (30 percent).

SOURCE: TeleGeography, Anatel

Playing for Cash

Video game pricing is less than cutthroat, as hefty revenues outpaced sales in the first quarter of 2005, according to the NPD Group. U.S. video game revenues increased 23 percent year-over-year to $2.2 billion. In the same period, unit sales were up 18 percent year-over-year to 63 million units. Console software led the way with $1 billion in revenue (for seven percent growth year-over-year), but portable game hardware had 162 percent revenue growth to $293 million. All categories measured had both revenue and unit growth. The top game for the quarter was Sony’s Gran Turismo 4 for Playstation 2, released in February. Sony had five of the top 10 games.

SOURCE: The NPD Group

Stop the Presses

Young people in search of news are looking to PC and TV screens, according to new research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Although the Carnegie report did not note an overall decrease in news-seeking, it gave its survey results the fatalistic title “Abandoning the News.” Forty-four percent of U.S. 18- to 34-year-olds get their news from web portals on a daily basis, while 37 percent use local TV newscasts. Newspapers win just 19 percent of young readers on a daily basis, while newspaper web sites have 14 percent. The Internet is the top choice for financial news, while favorite sources for local, national, and international coverage are split between local news, national network news, and cable news programs, respectively. Carnegie made the easy bet of estimating that the Internet will grow as a news resource for all genders and age groups in the next three years.

SOURCE: Carnegie Corporation of New York