|
As we are approaching the year end, Gartner – the market research firm, released
revised data for predicting handset sales for 2010. According to earlier reports,
there was a global decline of 0.67%, which will change and make an upward trend
in 2010 due to shorter model replacement cycles and growing popularity of app stores.
Though the sales figure fell steeply in 2009, it was lower than the predicted 3.7%,
due to increased sales in Western Europe in the last couple of months of the year.
Moreover, there has been an increase in the sales of mobile phones in the grey market
in various parts of the world, such as - Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
According to Gartner's Research Director, Carolina Milanese, "the grey market will
affect Nokia's market share the most." Smartphones are expected to do very well
as long as the mobile operators keep a check on the high and flat-rate data plans
which tend to make the phone unaffordable. More so, with the extreme competition
causing average selling price to fall, she says, "Software, services and content
will be much bigger drivers than hardware, pushing traditional mobile phone vendors
to reinvent themselves to remain at the top of their game." She further added that
the grey markets in Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and India were responsible
for the sale of around 250 million handsets in 2009. The research conducted by Gartner
also revealed that the sales of smartphone will rise steeply in 2010. The main reason
being dramatic increase in demand around the world for smartphones. Furthermore,
the average price will drop by 3% and mobile phone networks will offer shorter contracts
to consumers, as consumers do not like being tied up to a contract for a long period
of time. Addition, it has been predicted that smartphones will account for almost
19% of total mobile sales in 2010.
|
