Worldwide handset market sees continued growth

The worldwide mobile phone market just keeps on growing, with IDC’s latest results showing a 17.9% rise in the fourth quarter of 2010 alone. The market research outfit says vendors shipped 401.4 million units in 4Q10 compared to 340.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009 and that 1.39 billion units were shipped on a cumulative worldwide basis in 2010, up 18.5% from the 1.17 billion units shipped the previous year.
2009, admittedly was a rather weak year after the market took a battering from the worldwide economic crisis, and the mobile segment saw a 1.6% decline that year, but now things seem back on track, helped along by a burgeoning economy, and a wider array of increasingly affordable smartphones.
Indeed, the aforementioned factors, says IDC, has helped lift the market to its highest annual growth rate since 2006 when it grew 22.6%.
“The mobile phone market has the wind behind its sails,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. “Mobile phone users are eager to swap out older devices for ones that handle data as well as voice, which is driving growth and replacement cycles.”
China and Chinese mobile firms are also playing their part in this now booming again market, with firms like ZTE Corp. moving rapidly up the world rankings for handset vendors by selling primarily lower-cost feature phones in emerging markets. ZTE now sits at No. 4 on the list of top worldwide handset vendors.
The top five certainly seems like a tumultuous place these days, with Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team noting, “change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year.”
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. and Sony Ericsson, he said, were all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smart phone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 and were “well within striking distance to move back into the top five list.”
The future for mobile phones is also looking remarkably rosy through IDC’s glasses. The firm says it believes the worldwide mobile phone market will be driven largely by smart phone growth through the end of 2014 and that feature phone users looking to do more with their devices will flock to smartphones in the years to come.
“This trend will help drive smartphone sub-market to grow 43.7% year over year in 2011,” said Restivo.
Looking at the year from a regional perspective, IDC says APAC’s mobile handset landscape was driven by both low-cost and high-end devices in 4Q10. Chinese firms ZTE and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. were active in pushing carriers to promote their low-cost Android smart phones in China, while higher-end smart phones from Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and HTC Corp. were also well received, with higher shipments than previous years.
In India, domestic brands like G-Five, Micromax, and Karbonn grew with aggressive advertising and branding activities for entry-level phones, says IDC.
In Western Europe the push towards smart phones was even stronger, with many a carrier offering customers deals to trade in their old feature phones and upgrade. The iPhone 4, HTC Desire, Nokia Corp. N8, Samsung Galaxy S, and BlackBerry 8520 were apparently the bestsellers on the European market.
The U.S. market was apparently characterized by handset vendors becoming more active in the retail space, with RIM and Apple maintaining a “healthy lead” while newcomers Dell Inc., Huawei, Kyocera Corp. and Sanyo Corp. launched their first smart phones to the U.S. market.
With 4G well on its way, and the commercial launch of Verizon Wireless’ LTE network, the buzz in the United States was heavily smart phone generated, as it was in Canada too.
The Latin American market is also seeing the sparks of user interest in smart phones, with Nokia, RIM, and Samsung doing well in the region and Chinese Huawei entering the fray as a relative newcomer.
“Smart phones, as well as QWERTY-enabled feature phones, helped boost social networking and messaging, two fast-growing trends in the market,” said IDC’s report. Alcatel and Huawei rival ZTE are also thriving in the Latin American market in the inexpensive entry-level space.