The mobile-phone industry took a collective deep sigh of relief, as new research found phone shipments are growing at an impressive rate and sales of new smart phones have leapt during the past year.
Research firm IDC said worldwide mobile-phone shipments grew 19 percent during the year to 118 million units. Even more impressive, the firm found sales of smart phones-devices that many in the industry have ridiculed-jumped to almost 2 million units in the quarter-accounting for 1.7 percent of the total mobile-phone market. Such gains mark a major increase because smart phones commanded only 0.5 percent of mobile-phone shipments a year ago.
“Despite continued economic uncertainty worldwide, the threat of SARS, and concerns of terrorism, the mobile-phone market recorded impressive results this past quarter,” said Ross Sealfon, a research analyst in IDC’s mobile device program. “After remarkable success in Japan, camera phones are attracting worldwide interest, and coupled with color displays and subsidized pricing, the overall mobile-phone market is seeing significant growth in 2003.”
Nokia Corp. came out ahead in both the overall mobile-phone market and the smart-phone market. The company commanded 34.6 percent of the worldwide mobile-phone market, managing to steal some market share from No. 2 mobile-phone maker Motorola Inc. Nokia scored 61 percent of the smart-phone market in the second quarter. Nokia’s nearest smart-phone competitor was Sony Ericsson, which earned only 10.2 percent of the market. Handspring Inc. dropped out of the top five smart-phone listing due to what IDC described as an aging product line.
Interestingly, plucky Sony Ericsson managed to reverse its long decline and retake the No. 5 spot from upstart LG Electronics in worldwide phone sales. The news follows respectable earnings news from Sony Ericsson.
