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Tag: handset

  • Low-Cost Handsets to Account for over Half of all Mobile Phones by 2014

    According to Juniper Research, low-cost handsets and Smartphones will together account for almost 79% of all new mobile phones by 2014, or just over 1 billion units in all.

    New research, which results have been contained in the latest Jupiter’s report ‘Low Cost Handsets: Markets, Opportunities & Forecasts 2009-2014’, has shown how the mobile handset market is becoming increasingly polarised between low cost handsets for emerging markets and high-end smartphones for developed regions – with the mid-range handset market being squeezed.

    Operators and vendors are preparing to deal with a massive influx of new users from low-income socio-economic groups in developing markets and a rising demand for complex ‘smart’ devices from affluent users in developed markets.

    Vendors such as Nokia, Apple and RIM (makers of Blackberry) are well positioned to benefit from these trends whilst players operating more in the mid range market such as Sony Ericsson and Motorola are having to rethink their strategy.

    According to the report author Andrew Kitson: “Low-cost handset shipments will number more than 700 million in 2014, up by 31% from levels seen in 2008, albeit down slightly from a peak of 716 million in 2012 as some users begin to upgrade to costlier devices. At the same time, smartphone shipment volumes will grow continuously across the forecast period, reaching almost 360 million by the end of the period. We therefore expect that mid-range device sales volumes will fall by more than 41% over the period”.

    In 2008, the Indian Sub Continent region accounted for the majority (23%) of low-cost handset sales, due to efforts by operators such as Vodafone to meet low-income users’ needs in markets such as India. By 2014, the region will account for 22% of sales.

    The report says also that take-up in emerging markets will be boosted by the availability of low-cost, highly targeted localised information services, such as Nokia’s Life Tools offering.

  • App Store Growth Risks Confusing Consumers

    INTERVIEW: Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at analyst house Informa, talks about some of the latest trends affecting the mobile voice and data markets.

    Speaking in advance of his address to the Insights’09 conference next month in Lisbon, he discusses the impact of the iPhone, the rush to open app stores and carriers’ attitude to mobile VoIP.

    There is no doubt the phenomenal success of Apple’s App Store has been the spur for other handset makers and carriers to open similar ventures.

    The rush to download software to the iPhone has led to Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Palm and RIM, and operators like Vodafone, announcing their own versions of online mobile application stores.

    But while these will give consumers incredible choice Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at analyst house Informa, said the proliferation of app stores might also lead to confusion.

    "It’s going to become a complete nightmare for the consumer," he said. "Already they have to make a decison about which device and which operating system, now they also have to decide which app store.

    "It’s unclear today if you buy a high-end Nokia device, with Vodafone as the operator and running the Symbian operating system, which app store you will first get access to."

    Newman said he believed there would be "massive fragmentation" since operators supporting hundreds of different handsets were not going to make all applications available on every handset.

    Mark Newman, Informa

    But he said mobile operators were keen to tap the lucrative app market because they realised that in the long-term new revenue-earning services are needed if they weren’t to become simply "dumb pipes".

    "Here we have a brand new market created by Apple. The operators are not going to allow Apple to secure that for themselves," he said.

    Newman is speaking at the Insights’09 conference next month in Lisbon, Portugal, an event covering a range of themes related to the global mobile market.

    He will be talking about the latest voice and data mobile trends on a global and regional scale.

    Mobile Has Become Indispensible

    In an interview with smartphone.biz-news, the analyst said there is no doubt that the mobile industry is being affected by the global recession.

    But he said that the financial results seen so far from the operators suggest that it is more robust than many other sectors.

    "The mobile phone is no longer a discretionary spend," he said. "It’s something we need for our everyday lives.

    "There are examples of people economising in their bills – but not as much as thought."

    Newman said a glance at any "high street" in any country around the world would reveal the dynamic and fast-changing nature of the mobile phone.

    He said this applied as much to the hardware – the handsets – as to the software and mobile applications.

    "In any country we will have 3-10 mobile operators, often fighting very aggressively to win market share," he said. "The winner tends to be the consumer."

    Newman said there had been two big new trends in mobile industry in the last couple of years.

    Mobile Broadband: Success and Challenge

    The first was mobile broadband, which allows laptops to be connected through the mobile network.

    He said that while the industry had been reasonably optimistic about the success of this service, operators have been surprised at how quickly it has grown.

    "Now it is a very big market and in many places is outselling fixed broadband," he said. "This brings new revenues for the operators but it also brings about major challenges for them as well.

    "Data services use up a lot more bandwidth than mobile voice services, so the operators are having to invest heavily to ensure support for data requirements."

    Newman said the evidence so far was that mobile broadband use was not dissimilar to that for fixed – with a lot of P2P traffic, which sucked up bandwidth.

    "What the mobile operators do not like is consumers paying a flat rate for services," he said. "They will think of ways around this."

    iPhone Sets the Pace

    Newman said the second big change to impact heavily on the mobile industry in the last couple of years has been the iPhone.

    He said the Apple handset’s success has had a profound effect – both on mobile operators and handset manufacturers.

    "If you look at its recent history – the last six months – it has moved from being an iconic handset in terms of its design, but it is the first example of a handheld device that people can use for basic internet connectivity," he said.

    "It is very exciting for a huge number of people and has opened up new services and possibilities."

    Newman said making internet connectivity mobile – and not just something you did from home – created the potential for a raft of features, not least the ability to use smartphones’ location capabilities to design new applications.

    While the iPhone is oriented towards the top end of the market, Newman said the fact it had been so succesful meant it was now being marketed to the broader consumer market.

    "It’s quite likely that Apple will introduce some low-priced offering," he said. "Which will be a threat to the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung."

    Posturing For Position

    Apple has also shown its ability to generate revenue through its app store and when it came to consumers paying for mobile applications, Newman said this has been well managed through the iTunes Store.

    He said having billing capacity was one factor that operators have in their favour, but it was unclear what payment mechanism Nokia, for example, was intending to use.

    "Nokia would like people to buy a Nokia device and be billed by Nokia," he said. "But the operators want revenue share from Nokia."

    Newman said that as a result, the industry is currently experiencing the early stages of posturing between players to determine how this very lucrative new market is going to be handled and divided up.

    He didn’t expect the outcome of this to be known for two to three years.

    "It’s not clear who will win," he said. "In the short-term it will be confined to high-end devices.

    "But that’s going to start to change as handset makers bring down the price of phones with internet capability."

    Newman said the issue was much simpler with Apple, since it had one device and a strong brand in the market.

    He said this meant Apple was in the "enviable position" of having the leverage to more easily dictate the terms of deals with operators.
    "Apple will keep that advantage," he added.

    As for Apple’s competitors, Newman believes Android will be a force to be reckoned with even if the early devices supporting its OS have not been as attractive as hoped.

    He said RIM’s Blackberrys and Palm’s soon-to-be launched Pre will both see demand for applications but not on anything like the scale of the iPhone.

    Mobile VoIP Not in Carriers’ Interests

    One area where Newman doesn’t see operators backing down is on the issue of Voice-over-IP (VoIP).

    While carrier 3UK recently launched a SIM card that allows users to make Skype calls for free, it stands out among mobile operators who have largely sought to block VoIP use over their networks.

    He describes 3UK’s position as unique and doubts if any other operators will follow its lead.

    "3UK is a group that entered the European market quite recently," he said. "They have come into a crowded market as the fourth or fifth operator and have the disadvantage of adding spectrum at high frequencies.

    "It’s not desperation – that’s harsh. But 3 has to offer something that’s different. They are using Skype largely as a marketing strategy in order to win customers from their competitors."

    Newman said that if any other operator took this approach it would simply be to stand out in a crowded market.

    "I can not see why it would be in an operator’s interests to allow VoIP," he said. "Eighty per cent of their revenues are voice, so there is really little or no motivation to allow VoIP."

    In the future, however, Newman said the roll out of next-generation LTE and the fact they were going to be All IP Networks meant it would be more difficult for operators to stop subscribers using VoIP.

    "Because of that we are seeing a lot of operators investing in technology that allows them to see different types of VoIP applications," he said.

    Newman said this raises the possibility of operators charging by VoIP type, with users being able to pay for the "privilege" of using VoIP.

    New Entrants

    If the dynamic nature of the mobile industry is causing carriers to feel the heat, consider also the situation with handset manufacturers.

    Recently, a number of companies whose heritage is in the PC space have either entered, or shown a desire to enter, the smartphone market – most notably Acer, HP and Dell.

    Newman said this was significant because of their access to low-cost manufacturing bases in the Asia Pacific region and their ability to share components, such as screens, across devices and industries.

    Consequently some of the traditional handset makers will be put under pressure over the next three to five years.

    He said this would result in some leading brand names’ market position being seriously transformed in much the same way that Sony Ericsson has moved from a position of great strength to one of weakness.

    Mark Newman will be speaking at the Insights’09 conference being held on 8-10 June in Lisbon, Portugal
    Click here for more information.

  • Nokia's Q1 Profit Drops 90% – But 5800 Smartphone Shines


    Nokia’s first-quarter profit plunged 90 per cent as the Finnish handset maker showed its vulnerabilty to the current economic difficulties.

    The world’s leading mobile manufacturer posted a net profit of just EURO €122 million (USD $161m), compared with EURO €1.22 billion (USD $1.58bn) in the year-ago period.

    One bright note was sales of Nokia’s first touchscreen S60 smartphone.

    The company revealed today that it has sold 2.6 million 5800 XpressMusic devices in just one quarter of availability.

    Overall, however, the company’s sales fell 27 per cent to EURO €9.28bn (USD $12.2bn) for the quarter, down from EURO €12.7bn (USD $16.77bn) in the first quarter of 2008.

    Handset sales were down 33 per cent to EURO €6.19 (USD $8.17bn), although the company did sell more phones than some analysts had predicted.

    Nokia shipped 93.2 million devices, down sequentially from the 113.1 million units it shipped in the fourth quarter of 2008 and down 19 per cent from the 115 million it sold in the year-ago quarter.

    Nokia’s market share remained steady at 37 per cent.

    While the Finnish giant’s result are hardly impressive, it isn’t alone in suffering from the downturm.

    Equally, the results were better than widely expected, which led to shares in the company rising by 8 per cent.

    Nokia sold 13.7 million converged (S60) devices, down from 14.6 million in Q1 2008 and 15.1 million in Q4 2008, of these 5 million were Nseries and 3 million were Eseries.

    Nokia’s industry outlook sees similar device volumes and market share for Q2, but expect overall conditions to improve in the second half of the year

    Olli-Pekka Kallasuvo, Nokia CEO, said:

    "In what has been an exceptionally tough environment, we continue to invest in a focused manner in consumer Internet services delivered across our broad portfolio of mobile devices. Combined, these solutions will drive our future growth. As an example in Q1, I am especially pleased with the performance of our first mass market touch product, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Together with Comes With Music, it is a great example of Nokia providing solutions that consumers value.

    Regarding the health of the overall mobile device market, the inventory already in the sales channels decreased substantially during Q1 due to extensive destocking by operators and distributors. This adversely impacted our sales volumes in the quarter. However, it has also resulted in the demand picture becoming more predictable as we enter the second quarter."

  • Acer Smartphone Gets Launch Date


    The first Acer-branded smartphone is to go on sale in the first quarter of 2009.

    While no details have been released – handset info or precise regions where it will be sold – it does at least firm up what have until now been largely speculative reports.

    The first Acer-branded handsets are expected to launch in first-quarter 2009 initially in Western Europe and Russia, with other markets to follow later.

    The company appears optimistic about the smartphone market, which it signalled its intent to enter with the purchase of Taiwan smartphone maker E-Ten Information Systems earlier this year.

    While Acer is confident the smartphone segment will be a major growth driver for the company over the next 3-5 years, it is equally bullish in other areas.

    With news of its smartphone activity came an similarly optimistic forecast from Acer about its growth opportunities for 2009.

    The company expects its notebook shipments to increase 15-20 per cent in 2009 and overall sales to grow 25-30 per cent year-on-year.

  • Smartphones Will Remain Dominant Mobile Video Platform


    Smartphones will continue to be the device most used for watching mobile video, according to research firm In-Stat.

    The high-end handsets will not have it all their own way though.

    Over the next five years, they will be joined by over 160 million other devices that provide mobile video over networks now in exclusive use by cellphones.

    David Chamberlain, In-Stat analyst, said the entry of this broad range of new mobile devices able to display video will have a profound effect on the mobile video market

    He said the reach of new device choices will provide more markets for mobile operators, mobile broadcasters, advertisers and other content owners.

    "Even though cellphones and smartphones will remain the predominant method of viewing mobile video, over 160 million other devices that provide mobile video over networks now in exclusive use by cellphones will be sold in the next five years," said Chamberlain.

    Other findings in In-Stat’s report Global Cellular Video Devices: Internet Video Expands the Market include:

    • Shipments of 3G video-capable cellphones will increase at 11.2 per cent annual growth, reaching over 641 million by 2013.
    • The number and types of devices using digital mobile broadcast networks such as ISDB-T, DVB-H, MediaFLO, and DMB-T will expand to nearly 127 million in five years. China’s CMMB will make up over 12 per cent of those devices.
    • More than a half-billion devices capable of viewing Internet video over 3G networks will be sold in 2013. Cumulative sales will approach 2 billion units.

  • Company Secrets Sold With Smartphones


    Salary details, financial data, bank account details, sensitive business plans, notes from board meetings and personal medical details are being discovered by buyers of second hand smartphones.

    Nearly a quarter of re-sold smartphones contain sensitive data, according to research carried out by the BT, the University of Glamorgan in Wales and Edith Cowan University in Australia.

    BlackBerry owners were the worst offenders for discarding their handsets with sensitive company and personal information.

    The survey of over 160 used gadgets found that in a number of cases BlackBerries were left unprotected, despite having security features like encryption built in.

    Buyer Got More Than Bargained For

    In one example, a Blackberry was examined that had been used by the sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) of a major Japanese corporation.

    It was possible to recover the call history, the address book, the diary and the messages from the device.

    The information that was contained in these provided the business plan of the organisation for the next period, the identification of the main customers and the state of the relationships with them, the relationship of the individual with their support staff and so on.

    Forty-three per cent of the smartphones examined contained information from which individuals, their organisation or specific personal data could be identified, creating a significant threat to both the individual and the organisation.

    The high-end handset are increasingly being adopted and used by organisations to support mobile workforces – yet only 35 per cent of companies have a mobile device security strategy in place.

    Even on less sophisticated devices, 23 per cent of the mobile phones examined still contained sufficient individual information to allow the researchers to identify the phone’s previous owner and employer.

    Businesses Unaware of Data Security

    The research highlights a lack of awareness amongst businesses about the amount of data that can be retrieved from mobile devices.

    The situation is made more complex as most of the devices are provided by a supplier as part of a mobile communications service.

    When they reach the end of their effective life, in most cases somewhere between one and two years, they have little or no residual value and they are not, in most cases, given any consideration with regard to the data that they may still contain.

    For a significant proportion of the devices that were examined, the information had not been effectively removed and as a result, both organisations and individuals were exposed to a range of potential crimes.

    These organisations had also failed to meet their statutory, regulatory and legal obligations.

  • Mobile TV To Become Standard Feature of Smartphones

    Mobile TV has really only achieved great popularity in nations such as Japan and Korea.

    But the market is expected to expand rapidly over the next few years, spurred on by the smartphone which is driving improvements in screen quality, microchips and antennas.

    Smartphone.biz-news.com spoke to David Srodzinski, chief executive of fledgling semiconductor firm Elonics, about his expectations for the future of mobile TV.

    Mobile TV will soon become as accepted a feature of mobile handsets as the camera.

    That is the prediction of David Srodzinski, founder and chief executive of Elonics, a semiconductor company that has designed a silicon radio frequency (RF) tuner used to convert signals into sound and pictures.

    “We do see mobile TV as going to take off just like the camera phone has taken off,” he said.

    “It’s not something you will use all the time, but it’s a part of the phone that will be such a ‘nice to have’ feature that all phones will simply have to have them.”

    David Srodzinski CEO Elonics

    Based in Livingston, Scotland, Elonics recently announced that David Milne, the founder and former chief executive of chip maker Wolfson Microelectronics, was joining its board as non-executive chairman.

    Milne was credited with taking Wolfson from a university spinout to the FTSE 250 and the company made its name as a key supplier of microchips to the iPod.

    Founded in 2003, Elonics has developed RF architecture called DigitalTune that is the foundation for a family of re-configurable CMOS RF front end products.

    Its E4000 device is designed for reception of all major world-wide fixed and handheld terrestrial digital multi-media broadcast standards within UHF to L-Band ranges (76MHz to 1.70GHz).

    It allows designers to implement front ends capable of cost effectively supporting multiple TV and radio broadcast standards and enabling smaller, lighter, cheaper and lower power consumer electronics.

    Elonics has finished market sampling its products and is about to begin mass-production.

    Srodzinski said the immediate focus for the broadcast receiver technology was the traditional TV market, ranging from digital TVs, set-top boxes and PC TVs to multi-media devices.

    But he believed the biggest opportunities lay in the mobile TV market, with analysts forecasting sales of mobile TV enabled handsets rising to 100 millionin 2010.

    “All future potential growth is coming from the cell phone side of the market,” he said. “Smartphones are increasingly a sizeable part of that market.”

    Screen size and quality a key factor influencing the adoption of mobile TV on cell phones

    Srodzinski said that with QVGA screens appearing on increasing numbers of handsets, a barrier to mobile TV was being removed.

    He said that prior to the introduction of QVGA screens, adding mobile TV to a cell phone meant additional costs for the screen, the graphic processors and mobile TV chip set.

    “With the advent of QVGA offerings, such as on the new HTC phones and the iPhone, which have them as standard, the cost add of mobile TV is minimal now,” he said.

    For the screens alone, Srodzinski estimated that the cost add had dropped by a tenth, from USD $50 to $5.
    “All that has to be added now is the mobile TV chip set,” he said.

    But if cost and technological issues were no longer an impediment to widespread uptake of mobile TV, what about users’ appetite for the service?

    Srodzinski expected mobile TV to be something people would use once or twice a week for five to 10 minutes, most probably as a free-to-view service.

    “That user experience will be such a good feature and such a compelling reason, that people will want mobile TV on their cell phones in a similar way to how they want to have camera phones too,” he said.

    “We believe that if mobile TV works and takes off in that way, it will be a major opportunity that will grow out of the smartphone and into middle layer cell phones.”

    The great success of mobile TV in Japan and Korea, where penetration rates now reach 40 per cent, owes a great deal to government intervention promoting the services, according to Srodzinski.

    He said this had created revenue opportunities and lifted technological barriers to entry.

    “What’s holding back other parts of the world has more to do with the infrastructure roll-out and the cost of doing that,” he said. “That and the lack of clear government support.”

    However, Srodzinski insisted that the growth of mobile TV in territories outwith Japan and Korea would accelerate as more people experienced it and saw the quality of the services and content.

    “I think other regions will catch on,” he said. “This is not a technological push situation – it has to be a consumer-led requirement., especially if it’s free-to-air that takes off.”

    While content may be free, any explosion in mobile TV will also have to offer opportunities for revenue to the industry.
    As Srodzinski said: “The question has to be: who makes any money out of it? There’s no particular economic benefit to operators.”

    Undoubtedly an answer to that conundrum will be found, but will mobile TV really take off?
    Please let us know your thoughts on the matter.

  • "Iconic" new smartphone models will entice buyers

    Launch of latest smartphones by Apple, RIM, Nokia and Samsung will ensure handset markets enjoy strong end to 2008

    Some impressive mobile phone product launches between now and the year-end will help the world’s mobile handset markets finish 2008 with strong sales, according to ABI Research.

    Spurred on by the launch of Apple’s second-generation iPhone, rival handset vendors such as RIM, Nokia and Samsung are also expected to debut new models in the second half of 2008.

    Kevin Burden, director of ABI Research, said such “iconic” models generate a lot of interest around the handset industry and get consumers thinking about replacement.
    “2008 should still be a very good year for the global mobile phone market,” he said.
    “While Q2 performance figures are still preliminary until finalised at the end of July, early indications do not point to an aggressively weak quarter.

    “Historically, the second half of the year has always outperformed the first, and despite nearly global economic problems, a second half lift is still expected, although likely lower than the near 20 per cent increase the worldwide market has seen in recent years.”

    Burden said that greater simplicity in handset design had been a powerful driver in new adoption over the last two years.
    He said a lot of advanced technologies and applications hade been built into phones but there had often been technical or ease-of-use barriers that prevented wide adoption.

    “The trend now is about making better use of what we have rather than introducing a flood of new services and network features,” he said.
    “That’s going to go a long way towards ensuring users’ acceptance of new phones and new applications.”

    Burden was speaking after the release of the latest update to ABI Research’s Mobile Device Market Share Analysis and Forecasts.
    It reports that many usability issues will also be progressively worked out as the industry increasingly moves towards standardised operating systems.

    Proprietary real-time operating systems can be painful to manage for operators as well as for users.
    Open operating systems will continue to migrate down phone vendors’ product lines, increasing the penetration of devices using standardised and predictable platforms and boosting overall ease of use.

  • Brightpoint to implement cost-cutting in Europe after predicting slowdown in handset sales






    The mobile phone distributor, Brightpoint, is to take cost-cutting measures across its global operations over fears of a slowdown in handset sales.
    The company said it now expects the global handset market to reach 1.25-1.30 billion units this year, down from a previous estimate of 1.25-1.35 billion.
    Second-quarter sell-in units are expected to be “flat to slightly up” compared to the first three months of the year.
    This contrasts with a previous forecast for 3-5 per cent growth by the distributor.
    The cost-cutting will come mainly in Europe, at the former Dangaard operations.
    Brightpoint is cutting 50-75 jobs at its European head office in Denmark, and eliminating another 225-250 positions across its other European operations.
    This is expected to result in annual cost savings of US$25-30 million.
    Brightpoint is implementing other cost reduction initiatives in its Americas and Asia Pacific divisions as well as within its corporate and global information technology organisations.
    The company has simultaneously begun the evaluation and design phases of a European shared service facility and warehouse consolidation and automation projects.
    These measures are expected to contribute “significant additional cost synergies” as they are implemented over the next 6-24 months.
    Brightpoint also announced the resignation of Dangaard founder Steen Pedersen, currently president of Brightpoint Europe, from 19 November.
    Michael Koehn Milland, currently co-COO and president of international operations at Brightpoint, will take the new role of president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
    Milland will be responsible for global business development with the objective of increasing Brightpoint’s market share worldwide.
    Mark Howell, the other co-COO, will take up the position of president Americas and also oversee all global logistics operations.