For years the ranking of global handset vendors was a fairly predictable exercise. Nokia was a number one, trailed by Motorola in second place and Samsung in third. Then Motorola's persistent bout of ill health shook things up a bit, allowing Korean manufacturer Samsung to claim second position last year.
But 2007 will also be remembered as the year things got interesting in the gadget space for other reasons, other reasons being the three new entrants into the handset vendor top ten during the fourth quarter of 2007. The new pretenders are BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM), Chinese manufacturer ZTE and Apple, and their entry to the charts is significant because they all play in particular niches.
Apple's iPhone shipment figures, with just over 3.7 million units shifted to retailers in 2007, have not been large by industry standards. But in its short time in the mobile handset market, Apple has managed to capture subscribers' attention by delivering a range of desirable, easy to use features and by changing the rules in a number of areas.
But Apples are not the only fruit, and BlackBerries also proved to be popular for the time of year, with RIM recently saying it expects fourth quarter net adds to be 15 to 20 per cent higher than the expected 1.82 million it previously forecast. RIM's total BlackBerry subscriber base is now expected to hit approximately 14 million at the end of March, following strong growth in the New Year. "The seasonal slowdown in net subscriber account additions that we expected in the New Year did not occur and our focused execution with partners has continued to produce strong results within both enterprise and consumer segments," said Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM.
Meanwhile, in the low tier, ZTE continued its cut price assault, eroding other vendors' market share in emerging markets. Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, commented on the new competitors: "On one hand, we have aggressive pricing and a focus on emerging markets (ZTE), and on the other, RIM with targeted functions and Apple with brand and design."
According to Gartner, worldwide sales of mobile phones surpassed 1.15 billion units in 2007, a 16 per cent increase from 2006, with fourth quarter sales reaching 330 million units. Emerging markets, especially China and India, provided much of the growth as many consumers bought their first phone. While in mature markets such as Japan and Western Europe, consumers' appetite for feature phones was met with models packed with TV tuners, GPS functions, touch screens and high resolution cameras.
Telecoms.com
