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Smartphones dominate European handset business
Published: 6 March, 2009
Tags >> Europe | Handset
Another survey confirms that smartphones are the most resilient part of the handset business, and so does LG, with its new flagship, the multitouch Arena, clocking up over a million pre-orders in the three weeks since it was launched. The phone will ship in Europe late this month and then globally, with an expected pre-subsidy price of around €400 ($600).
New figures from IDC show a familiar pattern for the last quarter of 2008 - mobile phone shipments down overall, but with smartphone shipments going through the roof, as the fight for contract customers at the top of the market gets fierce.
According to IDC, shipments of 'converged phones' (smartphones with internet connectivity) in the fourth quarter were almost 26% higher than a year earlier, and for the whole of 2008 the figures were 36% higher. The effect of the recession in the last quarter slowed growth down a bit, but a 26% increase is still big news. The researchers pick out the RIM BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Bold, T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Touch HD for special attention, and now they have been joined by the Arena, the Nokia E71 and N97, the Samsung Omnia HD, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and others, while of course the 3G iPhone is still very much around.
"The launch of 3G iPhone last year attracted consumer attention to this segment in western Europe. Since then these devices have been seen as personal devices rather than just professional devices," said Francisco Jeronimo of IDC, who paints a picture of handset price wars and an arms race in terms of technology - to get the highest megapixel cameras, the biggest displays, the latest processors, the cheapest GPS enablement .
In the quarter, phones that offered high density internet data applications grew by 94% as opposed to a 21% decline in phones that just did voice. Overall, Nokia was market leader in internet phones, with 53.6% share - well above its overall share of about 38%, but down from 60% a year earlier because of increased competition from entrants like RIM, which was in second place with 16.7%, followed by Apple on 10.7%, then HTC and Samsung.
