Mobile phone industry pulls out of the recession

THE BEANCOUNTERS at Isuppli have declared the recession formally over as far as the mobile phone industry is concerned.

The analyst outfit said that the mobile phone industry had an outstanding final quarter of 2009 and projected substantial growth for smartphones in 2010.

It was not really as if the industry suffered that badly during the recession. Sales for 2009 were down a bit at 1.15 billion units but that was not that far down from the 1.2 billion handsets flogged in 2008.

Tina Teng, senior analyst for wireless systems at Isuppli said that given the recovery of the market in the final quarter of 2009, and with Europe, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa regions doing exceptionally well during the period, the recession can be said to be officially over for the cell phone industry.

She expects growth this year of 11.3 per cent to 1.3 billion units.

Smartphone use is predicted to expand 35.5 per cent in 2010. Growth will be driven by the introduction of entry-level smartphones, she said.

Handset shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009 amounted to approximately 257.6 million units, and the top five players accounted for a whopping 77 per cent share of the total handset market.

Nokia led the handset market, shipping 126.9 million handsets during the period, which gave it a 37.9 per cent share of market. Samsung Electronics, which has introduced its own smartphone operating system, held the number two spot with a 20.6 per cent share. LG Electronics was third with a 10.1 per cent share while Sony Ericsson was in fourth, with 4.4 per cent. The Chinese giant ZTE was in fifth place with a 4 per cent share.

Despite getting 99.99 per cent of the coverage in the US press, Apple didn't even register in the worldwide mobile phone market. µ