14 DAY TRIAL // Although the financial recession has influenced the mobile phone market a lot, it seems that sales remained strong during the first quarter of the ongoing year, and mobile phone vendors managed to ship a total of 258 million handsets in the three-month time frame. The figure marks an 11 percent drop compared to the same period a year ago, yet it is higher than the previous forecasts of 253.5 million, says ABI Research.
It seems that the market hasn't diminished as much as expected during the first quarter of the ongoing year, though distributors cleared their inventories in 4Q-2008 and 1Q-2009 while preparing for the worst. In addition, ABI Research also says that it has revised its handset prevision for the entire year, placing it at -8 percent, up a little from the previous -8.4 percent.
“This will not be a V-shaped recovery. 2Q-2008 was a fairly strong quarter for handset sales so handset shipments for 2Q-2009 are going to report a -10% decline YoY, but QoQ, they should show improvement,” says ABI Research Vice President Jake Saunders.
“As always there are winners and losers,” says director Kevin Burden. “Samsung and LG demonstrated healthy gains to take their market shares to 17.8% and 8.8% respectively. Another star performer was RIM which raised its share to 3.0% due largely to the success of its Blackberry Bold. It is a little curious that Apple's market share is just 1.5% given the success of its AppStore. [...] ABI Research expects that by 2H-2009 the iPhone3G will have one or more siblings. That will allow Apple to accelerate growth.”
According to the research firm, Nokia and SonyEricsson saw the largest contractions, as they now account for a market share of 36.2 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, yet the Finnish phone maker is expected to perform much better as soon as its latest smartphone, the N97, becomes available. Sony Ericsson has been affected by the fact that carriers were more attracted by the smartphone area and less by feature phones.
Though there are sings of optimism, ABI Research says that the industry should be cautious, as unemployment is expected to rise, while buyers in the developed countries will certainly think about the security of their jobs. At the same time, it seems that developing economies might be influenced by the recession on the credit side.
ABI Research's Mobile Devices Vendor Share offers quarterly and annual historical vendor market share, as well as vendor average selling prices (ASPs) and technology ASP trends. Those who would like to learn more on the latest quarterly wireless handset announcements and handset feature analysis can find the spreadsheets here.