News

1 August 2008

 

Economic slowdown bypasses mobile device market

Tier one handset vendors saw year-over-year unit shipment growth of between 15% and 22% in Q2/2008, says ABI Research. An estimated 301m units were shipped during Q2, reaffirming ABI’s forecast that the mobile device market will deliver 13% growth to take 2008 annual shipments to 1.3bn units.

"If there is an economic slowdown, no one bothered to tell the mobile device buying public,” says ABI Research vice president Jake Saunders. “In particular, consumers in emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America shrugged off inflation fears to sign up as mobile phone users. These healthy gains in net subscriber additions are stimulating replacement and upgrade sales. In developed markets handset purchases tended to be flat, but those consumers who did purchase dug deeper and paid out more for coveted higher-end handsets and smart-phones.”

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