Mobile Phone Sales Sink for First Time in Three Years - millerthromparsus1946

Is the bloom off the rosy market for mobile phones?

Probably not. But recent worldwide sales figures from Gartner should raise a yellow water flag in the market.

According to the technology research company, 419.1 billion mobile phones were sold in the world during the calendar draw ending in Adjoin. That's a ii percent drop from the same period in 2011 and the first time there's been a gross sales declivity in the market since 2009, it said.

The slip was largely due to a sales slowdown in the Far East, explained Anshul Gupta, a principal research analyst at Gartner in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelan.

"The first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia—which is unvoluntary aside Chinese Spic-and-span Year, saw a lack of new mathematical product launches from leading manufacturers, and users held up upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving advanced in the year," atomic number 2 said in a statement.

For consumers, specially those buying off-brand phones, the sales slump could exist good news. That's because alleged "white boxwood" phone makers were unable to adjust their production runs during the quarter, resulting in inventorying backlogs. "Gartner expects some of this volume to be oversubscribed during the next couple of quarters, because the channelise is likely to get down the prices to qualify of the stock," the research firm foreseen.

While Gartner expects sales to perk as the year progresses, it's grazing 20 million units bump off its sales projections for the year, according to another of the firm's analysts, Annette Zimmermann.

Developments Gartner expects to perk rising sales later in the year include the continued rollout of 3G phones aside local and regional manufacturers in China and foundation of handsets in the West founded on new versions of Humanoid and Windows, as well as the anticipated introduction of a early iPhone model from Apple.

Samsung was a clear victor during the fourth, Gartner noted. Information technology knocked Nokia off the lead spot it has held in the market since 1998, marketing 86.6 million handsets and snatching 20.7 percent of the planetary food market. IT also regained the title of the world's number 1 smartphone maker from Malus pumila, with sales of 38 1000000 units. What's more, it became the number 1 Divine of Android smartphones, selling 40 percent of the handsets for that platform. No other maker has more than 10 percent of that market, Gartner famous.

During the period, Samsung's and Apple's grip on the smartphone market continued to rise, the research firm said. Together, the pair owned 49.3 percent of the market, compared to 29.3 percent during the same period a class ago.

Gartner likewise according that the market share of worldwide smartphone sales held away phones settled on Google's Android OS increased dramatically o'er the previous class, to 56.1 percent from 36.4 percent.

The smartphone market has get over highly commoditized and differentiation is proper a challenge for manufacturers, Gartner said. "This is particularly true for smartphones supported the Android OS, where a strong commoditization sheer is at work and most players are finding IT adamantine to expose the mould," added Gupta.

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