Cell Phone Shipments to Top 1 Billion This Year

6:30 am on April 25, 2006 | Category: Business, Mobile Devices

mobile.jpg

Worldwide mobile phone shipments are expected to reach the landmark milestone of 1 billion this year, according to a recent report, but this shipping boom might not spell an increase in profits for suppliers.

The Strategy Analytics report bases its prediction on the strong growth trend in the latter months of 2005, but says that most of the growth this year will take place in developing nations, where handsets are generally cheap and basic, while manufacturer profit margins are slim.

“Total global handset shipment growth of 31 percent annually, driven largely by emerging markets such as India is at its highest rate for almost two years,” said Strategy Analytics director, Neil Mawston, in a statement about the study. He is expecting annual growth in the mobile phone market to reach 22% in 2006, over and above the 817 million devices sold last year.

The report also touched on the fact that Motorola is closing the market share gap on current leader, Nokia. The American company has reduced the difference between its market share and Nokia’s from 19% to 13%, since early 2002.

“Motorola was the star performer in terms of volumes, but the growing need to compete in low-cost markets adds fuel to the theory that it has reached its profits-ceiling,” said Chris Ambrosio, another director at the research firm. “Samsung and LG are also both feeling this profit pressure.”

Related Articles:

    None Found

    3 Comments »

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    1. The main growth will take place perhaps in SOuth Asia. Mobile phone sale is grwoing in the markets of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan at an unbelivable pace. For example, Pakistan is still a poor country but it has now a

      teledensity fo 22%       (22 phone connections per 100 persons).

      Comment by Razib Ahmed — April 25, 2006 #

    2. Error in title: should read “1 billion units.” In revenue terms it will be closer to $100bn.

      Comment by Stuart — May 2, 2006 #

    3. Yes, you’re quite right. Typo fixed. :)

      Comment by Jeremy — May 3, 2006 #

    Leave a comment

    XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>


    Published by TeleClick Enterprises
    Edited by Jeremy Maddock