Q1 mobile phone sales up 14 per cent

Q1 mobile phone sales up 14 per cent

India remained a high-growth market

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

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MUMBAI, INDIA: Worldwide sales of mobile phones reached 294.3 million units in the first quarter of 2008, a 13.6 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner Inc.

Sales of mobile phones in Western Europe decreased 16.4 per cent from the first quarter of 2007, the first decline in this region since Gartner began tracking the mobile devices market in 2001.

“While sales in emerging markets continued to be driven by strong net new subscribers’ growth, mature markets felt the pressure of an uncertain economic environment,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner.

Nokia sold 115.2 million mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008, as its market share slipped slightly to 39.1 per cent.

Samsung maintained its momentum in the first quarter of 2008 with sales reaching 42.4 million units.

Motorola carried the problems it had in 2007 through to the first quarter of 2008 and sales fell to 29.9 million units.

LG had an excellent start to 2008 with sales reaching 23.6 million units and a market share of eight per cent.

As a result, LG overtook Sony Ericsson to become the No. 4 vendor worldwide. In the first quarter of 2008, 114.4 million mobile devices were sold in Asia/Pacific.

This represented a 26.6 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2007.

India remained a high-growth market.

“Growth in Asia/Pacific was driven by a high number of new subscribers, lower-priced phones based on wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) technology, as well as low-cost global system for mobile communications (GSM) phones and ultra-low-cost CDMA devices,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst for mobile terminals at Gartner, based in Mumbai.

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