Worldwide decline in mobile handset sales
europemedia.net
23/05/2002
Editor: Sean Cornwell
93.8 million mobile phones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of
2002, a 3.8 per cent decline from the first quarter of 2001, according
to Gartner Dataquest.
Market-leader Nokia experienced a slight decline in global sales to
end-users compared to the same quarter last year. However Nokia
remains the clear market leader and did manage to register a slight
increase in market share versus the same quarter in 2001, despite
very weak market conditions in some of its core markets.
Motorola's market share position continued to grow strongly to 13.6
per cent in the first quarter of 2002, thanks to its continued dominance
of the Chinese mobile terminal market and its strength in CDMA
markets worldwide, according to Gartner figures.
Samsung and Siemens experienced the strongest increase in sales,
with growth rates of 48.6 per cent and 24.1 per cent, respectively,
during the quarter.
Samsung has now in fact overtaken Siemens as the third largest
handset vendor. This is down to "its ongoing success in delivering
compelling products across multiple technologies in disparate
markets," said Bryan Prohm, senior analyst with the Mobile
Communications Worldwide research group for Gartner Dataquest.
"Siemens, meanwhile, continued to build on the success it achieved
during the latter half of 2001, and it is positioned to make a
competitive push in the North American and Latin American GSM
markets in 2002."
Mobile terminal consumption in several key regional markets was
again disappointing in the first quarter of 2002. In particular, both
Western Europe and Latin America suffered their second consecutive
first-quarter fall in year-over-year sales. The Asia/Pacific region
(excluding Japan) however, exceeded expectations, as sales in the
first quarter increased by 8 per cent versus the first quarter of 2001,
and jumped by more than 12 per cent sequentially from the fourth
quarter of 2001.
"Saturation levels in Western Europe mean driving new growth
remains a challenge," said Ben Wood, senior analyst for Gartner
Dataquest in Europe. "The industry is faced with an 'application gap,'
which could prove detrimental. Subscribers remain unconvinced
about the benefits of owning a data-capable phone without the
appropriate applications. However, the advent of colour screens will
help as subscribers are willing to buy color for the sake of colour."
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