Mobile Phone Shipments to Sink 20% This Year

Up until now, the global shipments of mobile phones as well as the subscription numbers managed to maintain a rather steady line during the global economical downturn, yet it seems that the future will not be as bright as expected, In-Stat reports. According to the company, both mobile phone shipments and subscriptions are expected to see further drops, only that the latter should do better than handset sales, though still greatly affected by the economic recession.

“People that are unemployed are less likely to replace their cellphones, and businesses will not pay for cellphone subscriptions for employees they’ve let go,” says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. “Even those with existing subscriptions are more willing to ‘make do’ with their existing handsets. As the wireless industry matures, replacement handsets make up three-quarters of handset sales; handset sales are now particularly vulnerable to economic contraction.”

A recently conducted research from In-Stat shows that subscription growth in 2009 will be of 8.9 percent, almost half the 19.3 percent registered in 2008, while in 2010 it will be of 6.3 percent. As for the worldwide mobile phone shipments during 2009, the company says that they should fall by 20.5 percent compared to the previous year.

Handset shipments will not see growth until 2011, the report says, when they are predicted to register a 9.6 percent increase. When it comes to subscriptions, Middle East and Africa are expected to have 75.2 million WCDMA/HSPA/HSPA+ subscriptions by 2013, while the number of SC-SCDMA subscriptions in Asia Pacific should grow more than tenfold between 2009 and 2013.

Some of the largest mobile phone makers in the world, including Nokia and Sony Ericsson, have been reported to expect the mobile phone market to shrink by only 10 percent during the ongoing year. At the same time, Nokia even stated that it expected that the second half of 2009 would be better and that the market would even start to see growth during that time frame.