News

Handsets: time for "planned obsolescence" for mobiles? Or just more pink?

The days when phone sales went up by more than ten per cent per year are over. In the future (says Informa) growth will be pitiful: "Informa predicts the number of handsets shipped will still rise from 814.4 million at the end of 2005 to 1.255 billion by 2011."

So what can the industry do? Obviously, make handsets that don't last so long.

"The growth in developing markets such as India, China and Latin America is impressive," commented Dave McQueen, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, "but we are not seeing the same levels of phone take-up per capita. Handset sales in saturated developed markets [are] much slower and reliant on replacement of old models."

We're already seeing fashion being used as a major driver for old model replacement. Just google for pink and mobile as an example, or visit Amazon for a collection of pink phones - and this isn't aimed at the gay market, either.

Without pink marketing or other tricks, says Informa, the Nokias and Motorolas are facing serious slowdown. McQueen: "Since the slump in the worldwide handset market at the turn of the century, it has experienced double-digit growth year on year. Informa’s predictions, however, reveal this buoyant growth will slow from 2007 onwards, with annual growth rates eventually declining from 15.7% in 2006 to 3% in 2011."

The emerging economies, says Informa, "are experiencing large increases in subscriber numbers, driven by healthier economies and the availability of low-cost, entry-level handsets. Yet in more developed regions with high penetration rates, growth is largely restricted to active replacement of technologically advanced handsets – with capabilities including digital cameras, MP3 playback, video and broadcast TV – and will not sustain such major increases."

Details of the full report on the Informa web site.