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Title: Mobile phone sales said to be making a comeback Post by: mobaholic on February 01, 2010, 03:36:00 PM According to TheInquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1589433/mobile-phone-sales-comeback):- THE MOBILE PHONE MARKET grew by 11.3 per cent over the last quarter of 2009, heralding a return to recession busting double digit growth. According to analyst outfit IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, the festive season spurred the shipping of 325.3 million devices in the final three months of last year, up from 292.4 million during the same period in 2008. However the growth spurt was not enough to correct the overall annual decline of the mobile phone market, with around 1.13 billion units shipped throughout 2009, down 5.2 per cent from the 1.19 billion in 2008. "In 2009, the mobile phone market, like many others, contracted due to economic pressures. But as the year progressed, demand for mobile phones increased each quarter while year-over-year declines progressively decreased," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's mobile devices technology and trends team. According to another one of IDC's analysts Kevin Restivo, the US and Asia/Pacific regions led the charge and were primarily responsible for pushing the market back into growth territory. In terms of the technology, it seems that converged mobile devices are the way of the future, with that section of the market growing nearly 30 per cent year over year. "Consumer tastes for mobile phones have increasingly shifted from simple voice telephony to greater data usage, and both handset vendors and carriers have been eager to meet demand despite ongoing economic challenges," added Llamas. The top five vendors for 2009 were Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola respectively, however overall Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all lost market share, with Samsung and LG picking up most of the slack but other players also taking ground. The report concludes that 2010 will be a good recovery year for the mobile market, thanks largely to a combination of less economic uncertainty and a variety of high profile device launches. |