Mobile Handset Sales Fell 12.6 Percent In Q4: Report

Mobile phone sales in the final quarter of 2008 fell by 12.6 percent year-on-year to 289 million units according to IDC, which blamed a “perfect storm” of weak end-user demand, currency volatility and limited credit availability for the fact that the market fell instead of rising (as it normally does in that quarter) reports AFP. To emphasise the bad news mobile phone shipments fell by 10 percent to 295 million, so excess inventory increased. So — as expected — the first half of 2009 will be “challenging” and the handset market may not recover until 2010. IDC said that shipments for the full year 2008 increased by 3.5 percent year-on-year to 1.18 billion.

Smartphone sales increased by 22.5 percent year-on-year: “In mature markets, such as North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), the converged mobile device segment grew 70.1 percent and 25 percent respectively in 2008,” said Ryan Reith, another senior IDC research analyst…”As long as operators are able to continue to subsidize these devices, and developers continue to enhance applications, then this segment will be a silver lining to an otherwise gloomy market.” As long as smartphone users have significantly higher APRU it’s likely the subsidies will continue.

IDC ranked the manufacturers for 2008 with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) first (468.4 million units, 39.7 percent marketshare), Samsung second (196.7 million units, 16.7 percent marketshare), LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) third (100.7 million units, 8.5 percent marketshare), Motorola (NYSE: MOT) fourth (100.1 million units, 8.5 percent marketshare), and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) fifth (96.6 million units, 8.2 percent marketshare).

Comments have been disabled for this post