Shock horror! Nokia sees global handset market shrinking in 2009

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 00:52

IT Industry - Strategy

Analyst Nathan Burley told iTWire that in Asia there was a large and growing 'grey' market for cheap handset with unknown brands produced in small factories throughout Asia. "nobody is counting these figures" he said.

Ovum is also predicting connections to grow. Burley said that in tough economic times sales of new handsets were likely to be hit first as consumers extended refresh cycles and make more use of cheap secondhand handsets or 'grey market' products.

Ovum is predicting that mobile connections in Asia-Pacific (including China/India) will more than double from 1.4 billion in 2007 to 2.9 billion in 2013.

"This will mean that by 2011, Asia will be home to more than half of the world's mobile connections (from 42 percent in 2007)", said Burley.

"However, despite housing more than half the world's connections, lower ARPUs across Asia will mean it accounting for less than a third of industry revenue by 2013."

Ovum expects overall ARPUs to fall especially in emerging markets. "We do however still expect healthy revenue growth at an average annual growth rate of nine percent through to 2013," Burley said. "Data will also continue to grow as a proportion of industry revenue.

Ovum is forecasting that, by 2013, China and India will have 1.7 billion mobile services, Australia 28 million, Singapore 8.1 million and Indonesia 225 million.