European SIM Penetration highest in the World at 125%

MOBILE SUBSCRIBERs AND SIM PENETRATION IN EUROPE

With multiple SIM ownership common in Europe as in other regions, the number of real subscribers is significantly lower than the number of SIM connections. Multi SIM ownership in Europe and other developed markets tends to reflect the trend to multi-device ownership. According to the latest  report based on the data from gsmintelligence ,European  SIM penetration  is among the highest in the world with 125%, as compared with global SIM penetration of 82%

.At the end of 2012, Europe had close to 400M unique mobile subscribers (i.e.
people) actively using 629 million mobile connections (i.e. SIM cards). This brings
unique subscriber penetration in Europe to 79% compared to the 125% when based
on connections. The phenomenon of multiple-SIM ownership continues to distort
penetration rates based on connections as European consumers use 1.6 SIM cards
each on average.