14 DAY TRIAL // According to a recently published report from ABI Research, the market of mobile phone accessories is expected to top $55 billion by the end of 2009. As declared by the research firm, while the figure is showing a decline, when compared to the value of the market a year ago, it is surprising that the drop wasn't a more significant one.
“While improving slightly,” industry analyst Michael Morgan, stated. “Handset accessory market growth will remain somewhat sluggish in 2010, and not until 2011 will the 2008 figure be surpassed. After that, we expect, strong growth will resume.” However, the firm also notes that some segments of the market have to face bigger challenges.
Morgan mentiones that the memory card market has been oversupplied, and that the selling prices are only a little higher than the production costs, but that things are likely to change shortly. “While it’s always dangerous trying to call the bottom of a market, very recently it has begun to look as if memory card prices are stabilizing and even starting to rise slightly,” Morgan stated.
Consumers are those to benefit the most from the lower prices, as well as from an increase in the capacity of the cards pre-installed inside the handsets delivered today. Not too long ago, users would receive cards of 512 MB or 1 GB installed on their devices, yet now the bar has been raised up to 8 GB. Given the multimedia capabilities of today's handsets, this is seen as a great selling point, the research firm notes.
At the same time, ABI Research also comments that some handset vendors are pre-loading various content on the memory cards that ship with the handset, such as music, videos or games, so as to increase their value. The “Mobile Accessories Market Data” report from ABI Research can be found on the firm's website. The research is part of the Device Accessories Research Service, ABI Research also added.