Nokia vs Sharp, NEC, ......
Camera phone market booms, but Nokia lags - survey
Monday November 4, 12:01 am ET
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The fast-growing market for camera phones in the otherwise stagnant mobile phone industry is being dominated by Asian handset makers, with Finland's Nokia (NOK1V.HE) still far behind, a survey showed on Monday.
Some 9.5 million mobile camera phones were sold around the world in the first nine months of 2002, of which 7.9 million in Japan alone and 97 percent of that total in the Asia Pacific region, U.S. market research group Strategy Analytics found.
Japan's Sharp (Tokyo:6753.T - News), which is not even in the top 10 of mobile voice handset makers, was the leading camera phone supplier, having sold three million units to consumers in the period.
Although Nokia is the world leader in mobile handsets with 37 percent of the market, its rivals had sold millions of picture phones before it launched its first in the summer.
The market for camera phones, which allow users to take and send pictures straight from the handset, is growing rapidly to 4.6 million units sold in the third quarter from 3.2 million in the second.
It is still a fairly small part of the entire mobile phone market, which expects sales of some 400 million units this year.
Japan's NEC (Tokyo:6701.T - News) and Matsushita's (Tokyo:6752.T - News) Panasonic, Toshiba (Tokyo:6502.T - News), Casio (Tokyo:6952.T - News) and South Korea's Samsung Electronics (KSE:05930.KS - News) were giving Sharp strong competition, Strategy Analytics said in a report to be published on Tuesday.
"Every one of these companies has sold more camera phones than Nokia," said senior analyst Neil Mawston, who estimates some 220,000 Nokia camera phones were bought by end-users in the third quarter.
In Western Europe, where Nokia's and Sony Ericsson's camera phones have been on sale since the summer, only 200,000 units were sold in the third quarter.
The sales levels in Western Europe, Nokia's home market where it laid the foundations in for its global leadership, are similar to sales in Japan two years ago when picture messaging was first introduced by mobile carriers there.
Japanese vendors like Sharp are now coming to Europe, leveraging their two years of experience with local operators seeking to copy the success of aggressive Asian mobile carriers.
Britain-headquartered operator Vodafone (London:VOD.L - News) will this year buy 400,000 Sharp camera phones to support the introduction of its new Live! service, offering it alongside models from Panasonic, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Anglo-French operator Orange (Paris:ORA.PA - News) is buying phones from a Taiwanese contract maker.
Nokia's camera handset 7650 is slightly bulkier than most rivals and at an unsubsidised $650 it is estimated to be 10 to 30 percent more expensive than its Asian competitors.
biz.yahoo.com
Nokia to deliver 2 mln imaging phones by yr-end
Monday November 4, 8:58 am ET
(Alert corrected to make clear Vanjoki reference to phone delivery instead of launch)
MUNICH, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Nokia (NOK1V.HE), the world's largest handset maker, said on Monday it expects to have delivered by the end of 2002 two million units of its imaging model, which has a built-in digital camera.
"We are on our way to the second million before the end of the year," Nokia Mobile Phones Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki said at a mobile Internet conference in Munich.
Nokia began shipping its 7650 imaging device a few months ago and the model is seen as a key driver in kick-starting picture messaging services in Europe.
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