14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the number of mobile phones sold in the fourth quarter of last year was respectable, the new handsets proved underwhelming.
Throughout the last year, end-users preferred fashion and multimedia mobile phones. Mobile phones with 3G capabilities were mostly ignored, although mobile phone manufacturers had great expectations regarding those handsets.
According to ABI research, 294 million handsets were shipped in the fourth quarter, bringing the annual total short of close to 1 billion handsets. "End-users proved fickle for a number of wireless handset manufacturers," says wireless research director Stuart Carlaw. "Motorola's RAZR is no longer the darling of the marketplace and Nokia's E61 and E62 were unable to deliver knockout blows to RIM's BlackBerry devices. Furthermore a number of manufacturers responded to market conditions by cutting handset prices, which pulled down ASPs."
With the new year, new trends seem to be replacing the ones that we have grown accustomed to up until now. Mobile phone manufacturers are paying much more attention to emerging markets and developing more simple and affordable mobile phones.
Prices of handsets have been dropping recently and it looks like manufacturers that don't deliver low-cost mobile phones might see their market share diminish.
Many end-users also seem to be getting bored of most designs and features. Nowadays people are not easily impressed with new mobile phones that come out, especially if they are not very different from previously released models.
That is why, when an out of the ordinary mobile phones like the iPhone will be unveiled people will tend to forget that there's any other mobile phone out there. Also, it seems quite the same as last year, and 3G mobile phones won't be as successful as expected this year either.