Mobile phone sales drop predicted

IDC HAS BEEN consulting the tea leaves and shuffling the Tarot cards and worked out that mobile phone shipments will fall by more than two percent next year.

Apparently this will be the largest fall since 2001, if it happens.

IDC said it was all to do with the global economic crisis and that handset makers, network operators, component suppliers, taxi drivers and fat bloke down the pub were a bit worried about 2009.

An IDC anal-ist said that Nokia has already predicted a decline, but everyone only really started getting worried when mobile phone chipset vendors such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and MediaTek announced reductions in manufacturing.

He said that the reductions will hurt the entire mobile phone market. Despite this, smartphone sales will grow nearly nine percent next year, thanks to the fact they will be a wee bit cheaper.

IDC didn't put a figure on annual shipments, that would mean getting out the calculator, or maybe channelling a red Indian, and everyone knows they hate being channelled so close to the solstice.

However it did say that total mobile phone market globally was up seven per cent this year compared to 2007. After falling 2.2 per cent in 2009, IDC expects a rebound and believes the total market globally will grow by 7.7 per cent in 2010. µ

L'Inq
PC World