Cell Phone Sales To Top 420 Million Units
By Semiconductor Business News
Sep 15, 2000 (11:21 AM)
URL: techweb.com
SAN JOSE -- The mobile telephone market remains on pace to exceed 420 million units in 2000, said Dataquest Inc., which Thursday estimated that worldwide shipments of cellular phones reached 98 million handsets in the second quarter. Dataquest said the "Big Three" handset manufacturers continue to dominate mobile phone sales. Nokia Corp. (stock: NOK), Motorola Inc. (stock: MOT), and Ericcson (stock: ERICY) had a combined market share of 53 percent in cell phones during the second quarter, said the research firm.
Nokia sold 26,947 phones (27.5 percent) of the handsets in the second quarter, Motorola 15,289 (15.6 percent), and Ericsson 10,132 (10.3 percent), said Dataquest, San Jose, Calif.
According to some industry estimates, mobile phone makers sold about 270 million handsets last year. Last week, National Semiconductor Corp. managers said early forecasts from chip customers place cell phone shipments in 2001 at 600 to 650 million units. Chip makers have been attempting to scrutinize cell phone forecasts to avoid an oversupply of capacity in the next couple of years.
"Comprehensive changes are taking place in key global markets that comprise much of the annual and quarterly volume, from second generation voice-centric handsets to data-enabled devices of varying flavors, such as iMode, wireless application protocol (WAP), and so forth," said Bryan Prohm, senior analyst for Dataquest's Mobile Terminal Worldwide program.
"Mainstream market stability should return early in 2001, after the changeover to WAP and next generation products gain momentum," said Prohm. "Meanwhile, the shift to lower-end phones continues to lower barriers to market entry. There are more competitive share players in each major regional market now than in past years. As a result, supply has finally caught up with demand." |
