Americans are spending more on mobile phones than they did a year ago: “Americans bought 38 million phones in the third quarter up only 4 percent from the third quarter of 2006. But they spent a total of $3.2 billion on those phones, up from $2.2 billion a year earlier…Doing the math, that means the average phone cost $82.81 this year, up 40 percent from $58.95 a year ago” reports NYT. Is this surprising? Not really… whereas a few years ago someone may have had to spend an extra $100 to get a phone with polyphonic capabilities as opposed to monophonic, now they might spend an extra $50 and get a camera or video capabilities, which is a much better proposition. This is being played out, with smartphones increasing from 4 percent of all phones sold in the US a year ago to 11 percent for Q307. “Half the phones sold in the period could play MP3 music files, compared to one quarter a year ago. Bluetooth capability was on 72 percent of phones sold, compared to 50 percent a year ago.” And the iPhone came in as the sixth most popular phone model in the quarter, which is not bad considering its price.
RCR News notes the market taken by the different manufacturers: Motorola (NYSE: MOT) took 31 percent, LG (SEO: 066570) 17 percent, Samsung 16 percent and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 11 percent. Sanyo grabbed 4 percent.
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