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Oct. 1, 2008

Even if a growing number of individuals are worried about the global state of financial markets, the mobile handset industry is expected to still increase by about 13 percent in 2008.

According to a report from ABI Research, annual shipments of mobile devices will reach about 1.3 billion mobile handsets.

ABI said that a little over 300.9 million units shipped during the second quarter, and tier-one handset vendors had year-over-year unit shipment growth of between 15.1 and 21.9 percent.

Globally, mobile handset maker Nokia has surpassed the 40 percent market share for the first time in its history.

Jake Saunders, v.p. of ABI Research says “if there is an economic slowdown, no one seems to have told the mobile device buying public.”

He added “for instance, consumers in emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, South America and even in Africa shrugged off inflation fears to sign up as mobile phone users nevertheless."

Saunders added that “the gains in net subscriber additions are stimulating replacement and upgrade sales. In developed markets, handset sales tended to be flat, but those consumers who did purchase dug deeper and paid out more for higher-end handsets, smartphones and even Apple's iPhone.”

Overall, Samsung ranked second in mobile handset market share with 15.18 percent. Motorola barely held on to the third-place position with about 9.28 percent, ahead of LG’s 9.1 percent market share.

For its part, Sony Ericsson finished the list with an approximate 8.26 percent market share.

Some wireless industry analysts are now expecting the mobile phone market to grow by about 15 to 17 percent in 2009, and by about 16 to 20 percent in 2010. Others think these predictions might be a bit optimistic, given the current turmoil in global financial markets.

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Source: ABI Research.