Bad news for Apple and IPhone as mobile phone growth stalls
18/04/07 20:07 Filed in: Technology
Mixed fortunes are abound in the mobile phone market as it was annonced this week that the total number of handsets shipped in the first quarter of 2007 (January to March) were 252 million handsets, up 12% from the year earlier.
At first glance this would strike you as being something of an achievement, not to mention a gigantic landfill waiting to happen. But according to the study group Strategy Analystics, this has been the first annual rate of growth in nearly two years to have fell below the 20% mark. In plain speak, 8 million handsets failed to attract new customers at the start of the year.
Furthermore Motorola's shipments fell 1.5%.
But not everybody is having a bad time of it. Sony Ericsson saw a 63% rise in its sales to 21.8 million, while Nokia had a 21% increase.
Motorola looks like it will need at least a year of recovery to gain back its lost sales while third place Sony Ericsson snaps around its heals with a seires of impressive new phones. Motorola by comparison seems content to make yet more umpteen flavours of its 'Razor' phone while licking it's wounds over the (not very) iTunes compatible Rocker. Having been kicked in the teeth by Apple as it brings out its own iPhone it must come as some solice to Motorola that Apple are entering the mobile/cellular phone market just as it takes a downturn. Especially when you consider that Global Insight predict the biggest growth in the mobile phone subscribers will be in China and India; a market not generally associated with purchasing the latest and greatest forms of technology and more included to sell the best and use last decades model until it falls apart at the seems. China on the other hand seems hell bent on pattern infringement and general lawlessness in the eyes of the west. Quite how do you expect copyright to be upheld in a country with no legal precident of ownership is anyones guess.
Which brings me to the idea that Apple is merely creating the iPhone not because it wants to innovate the industry (because it ain't) but more because it's totally ran out of ideas to do with the iPod and making a widescreen unit would look like a copy of Microsofts ever so crippled Zoon player. "Welcome to the social." (for 3 days tops).
Is it yet another case of Apple being later to the market yet again? One thing is for sure. After all the rhetoric, unless the iPhone is the best thing since bread got sliced there could be a lot more than egg on faces in Cupertino. Something I'm sure hasn't been missed on them.
At first glance this would strike you as being something of an achievement, not to mention a gigantic landfill waiting to happen. But according to the study group Strategy Analystics, this has been the first annual rate of growth in nearly two years to have fell below the 20% mark. In plain speak, 8 million handsets failed to attract new customers at the start of the year.
Furthermore Motorola's shipments fell 1.5%.
But not everybody is having a bad time of it. Sony Ericsson saw a 63% rise in its sales to 21.8 million, while Nokia had a 21% increase.
Motorola looks like it will need at least a year of recovery to gain back its lost sales while third place Sony Ericsson snaps around its heals with a seires of impressive new phones. Motorola by comparison seems content to make yet more umpteen flavours of its 'Razor' phone while licking it's wounds over the (not very) iTunes compatible Rocker. Having been kicked in the teeth by Apple as it brings out its own iPhone it must come as some solice to Motorola that Apple are entering the mobile/cellular phone market just as it takes a downturn. Especially when you consider that Global Insight predict the biggest growth in the mobile phone subscribers will be in China and India; a market not generally associated with purchasing the latest and greatest forms of technology and more included to sell the best and use last decades model until it falls apart at the seems. China on the other hand seems hell bent on pattern infringement and general lawlessness in the eyes of the west. Quite how do you expect copyright to be upheld in a country with no legal precident of ownership is anyones guess.
Which brings me to the idea that Apple is merely creating the iPhone not because it wants to innovate the industry (because it ain't) but more because it's totally ran out of ideas to do with the iPod and making a widescreen unit would look like a copy of Microsofts ever so crippled Zoon player. "Welcome to the social." (for 3 days tops).
Is it yet another case of Apple being later to the market yet again? One thing is for sure. After all the rhetoric, unless the iPhone is the best thing since bread got sliced there could be a lot more than egg on faces in Cupertino. Something I'm sure hasn't been missed on them.