DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of new IE Market Research Corp report: 2Q.08 Global Handset Vendor and Technology Forecast.

Notable highlights of the forecast include:

* Unit shipments globally are expected to rise from 1.14 billion in 2007 to 1.59 billion in 2011. The biggest story as far as unit shipments are concerned is that we are expecting that shipments of converged mobile devices in the world will increase from 142 million in 2008 to 258 million in 2011, making up 16.2 percent of the global handset market.

* We expect 67 percent of the 1.59 billion shipments that will take place in 2011 to be 2.5G handsets. Our model is forecasting that shipments of 2.5G handsets will increase from 900 million in 2008 to 1.06 billion in 2011.

* 3G handset shipments are also increasing steadily. Over the forecast period of 2008-2011, we expect 3G handset shipment to increase by 75.6 percent from 200 million to 351 million.

* Nokia continues to perform well in the global 3G handset market. Nokia's 3G handsets accounted for 25.2 percent of all 3G handsets sold in the world in December 2006. The top five vendors -- Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG -- continue to gain market shares from other vendors in the global 3G handset market, primarily because Japanese vendors have not been able to make much inroads into the 3G space in international markets.