The Trends in Mobile Phone Market in 2009

The mobile phone market is looking up and did really well in 2009 despite the expectations of a credit crunch. Although the total sales slumped by 8% globally, Nokia did better than the earlier expectations and Apple managed to stay profitable.

The financial year highlights for the major mobile phone manufacturers are as follows:
1. Apple's gross profit margin rose to 36.4% from 32.9%, thereby posting a 15% increase in quarterly profit to $1.21 billion from its combined business. Apple sold 3.79 million phones with 123% growth YoY.

2. Nokia's profits declined 90% compared to the same period in the previous year, posting a net profit of $161 million on sales of $12.2 billion.

3. Samsung's mobile phone business however reported a 36% jump in revenue, with a sharp profit ascent to $700 million from $119 million for the fourth quarter.

4. Motorola posted total sales of $5.4 billion with a net loss of $231 million in its first quarter, which is certainly higher than the $194 million loss it had for the same quarter last year. The reported loss is much better than analyst forecasts.

5. Sony Ericsson reported a pre-tax loss of €358 million with the sale of handset plunging 36 percent from the same quarter last year. The gross profit declined to a mere 8% from 29% a year earlier.

Market Research Company, Infonetics fore-casted an 8% drop in the global mobile phone sales to 1.1 billion and predicted that smartphone sales will keep ascending this year too like in 2008. The same is reflected in the first quarter sales although the global economy slowdown has hit hard. The smartphone sales kept growing and symbian retains the top position followed by the Blackberry and iPhone.

The Mobile Phone Market in India:
Mobile phone companies garnered good sales in the first quarter in the country, assuming the number of new mobile phone sales to be on the order of the number of new mobile phone connections. The month of March recorded the highest ever GSM additions with more than10 million new subscribers (while the sales from the new CDMA connections are not known) taking the total mobile phone subscribers in the country to more than 330 million.

The mobile phone market is growing because of the rural market. It is quite fair to expect 90% of the new phone sales to be contributed by low to very low cost handsets which also includes the cheap mobile phones imported from china.

By: Amrith K.A.

Top Selling Mobile Phones in India:

Motorola AURA

Sony Ericsson W760i

Nokia E-66

Books on Cell Phones:
24/7: How Cell Phones
Phone Friends