Tag: mobile-phone

  • Memory Cards Earn Best Handset Accessory Revenue Return


    Memory cards provide the greatest revenue of all mobile phone add-ons, according ABI Research.

    This is despite cellular handset accessories such as chargers and batteries shipping far more units in what is today a USD $58 billion industry.

    Driven by the photo, audio and video demands of media-centric handsets and smartphones, these memory cards, largely from third-party suppliers such as SanDisk, will see a 17 per cent compound annual growth rate in shipments over the years to 2013.

    Industry analyst Michael Morgan said that of all accessories, memory cards deliver the best revenue return.

    "In fact, as production has outstripped demand the market is currently oversupplied, leading to a 60 per cent year-over-year fall in per-Megabyte prices," he said.

    "However, the memory capacity of the cards being sold is always increasing, and the resulting higher Megabyte volumes more than offset the decline in ASP."

    Handset makers have been putting inexpensive low-capacity cards into smartphone and media phone boxes for some time.

    Morgan said there is currently a point of friction between handset vendors and carriers: the operators want all memory cards out of the box, preferring to sell higher-capacity cards separately.

    "The challenge for mobile operators is that subsidizing handset accessories means losing some of the high margins that they earn through the sales of these products," he said.

    "But subsidies also mean that many more subscribers will have handset accessories such as memory cards, and will be more likely to use mobile music services or download songs, leading to higher data ARPUs for operators."

  • Motorola sues former executive now with Apple


    Motorola has sued a former executive for allegedly violating a non-compete agreement and threatening to reveal its trade secrets by taking a job with Apple’s iPhone division, the mobile phone maker said in a lawsuit.

    Michael Fenger accepted “millions of dollars in cash, restricted stock units, and stock options” in exchange for agreeing not to join a competitor for two years after leaving Motorola, where he oversaw mobile devices in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the lawsuit said.

    According to the lawsuit filed in Illinois last week he took the iPhone job on March 31, less than a month after leaving Motorola.
    Fenger, who now serves as vice president of global iPhone sales, also employed two high-level Motorola employees who have access to Motorola’s trade secrets and customer relationships, the suit said.

    An Apple spokeswoman said the company had no comment on the lawsuit. Fenger could not be reached for comment.
    Motorola, based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, is asking the Cook County court to stop Fenger from working for Apple for two years and to bar him from soliciting or hiring Motorola employees or disclosing Motorola’s confidential information.
    It is demanding damages and repayment of stock options given to him in exchange for signing the non-compete agreement.

  • Sony Ericsson cuts jobs as demand falls for its smartphones

    Plummeting demand for its high-end smartphones and inflation eroding margins for inexpensive mobile phones leads to job cuts

    The world’s fifth-placed handset maker is to shed 2,000 jobs as the company reports a Q2 operating loss of US$3.17 million.
    Sony Ericsson a drop in net income from US$347.6 million a year ago to US$9.48 million, while sales slumped 9.4 per cent to US$4.4 billion.

    Unit sales in the quarter reached 24.4 million, down from 24.9 million units a year ago.
    The closely watched average selling price per unit was US$183. A year ago, Sony Ericsson’s average price per unit was US$197.50.

    The joint venture between Sony and Ericsson AB also forecast further bad news in the third quarter.
    “Challenging market conditions are expected to prevail this quarter,” the company said in a statement.

    Sony Ericsson said the 2,000 job cuts among the company’s 11,900 employees will save US$474 million annually.
    The July 18 results marked the second consecutive quarter that Sony Ericsson has issued a profit warning before issuing quarterly results.

    A little more than a year ago, Sony Ericsson was the number four handset maker, pushing Motorola for the number 3 spot.
    Since then, however, the company has fallen to fifth while LG Electronics has taken over the fourth spot.

    Dick Komiyama, CEO of Sony Ericsson, said: “We are aligning our operations and resources worldwide to meet an increasingly competitive business environment and to help restore our capability for profitable growth.”

    Sony Ericsson is the second of the world’s handset makers to announce its quarterly results since research firm Gartner slashed its forecast for the mobile phone market to between 10 per cent and 11 per cent growth from a May estimate of 10 per cent and 15 per cent.
    In 2007, mobile phone growth margins were 16 per cent.

    Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia issued second quarter results earlier this week that were in line with analyst predictions.
    LG Electronics will announce its second quarter results on July 21, followed by Samsung on July 25 and Motorola on July 31.

  • "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.

  • Smartphone? Most people just want a camera, Bluetooth and music

    Research shows that cameras, bluetooth, and music top consumers’ lists as “must have” features on mobile phones

    The function-packed Apple iPhone 3G may about to be released to the world but many consumers say they just want a mobile that’s a phone
    Clint Wheelock, vice president and chief research officer for ABI Research, said: “It’s still a voice-centric world. Consumers across all mature markets still choose their mobile operator based on ‘the basics’: price, friends/family on the same network, and network coverage.”

    Speaking after the publication of an ABI Research consumer survey, Wheelock said the findings showed that digital camera functionality, Bluetooth connectivity, and music/radio playback on mobile phones were the top three features that people consider essential for the next mobile phone they will purchase.
    The desire for camera phones with 2+ megapixels leads the pack with 47 per cent of consumers listing this feature as a “must have,” followed by Bluetooth at 34 per cent and music/FM radio functionality at 32 per cent.

    Games and Internet access are also high on the list of features that subscribers have on their phones, but never use.
    “Many mobile data and multimedia services are failing to reach the mainstream not because they’re unavailable, but because they fail to provide a satisfactory user experience and pricing model for most consumers,” said Wheelock.

    However, he said the survey results identified some “surprising differences” between markets.
    “Camera phones, for example, were more than twice as important for consumers in Taiwan versus those in the US,” he said.
    “Similarly, Bluetooth is considered essential by mobile subscribers in Western Europe and Taiwan, but penetration of this feature is very low in Japan and South Korea, so it’s of little importance to consumers in those countries.”

    Other key findings from ABI Research’s global wireless consumer survey of 1,402 current wireless subscribers in seven countries, are as follows:

    * The three most common features that subscribers have on their current mobile phones are: games (64%), Internet access (61%), and 2+ megapixel cameras (58%).
    * The handset features that are least likely to be regarded as essential are: Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and games.

    Click here for full information on the ABI Research brief Wireless Subscriber Profiles and Preferences.

  • Mobile phone memory card market set for significant growth as more music, images, video and data stored





    There were 592 million slotted phones shipped worldwide in 2007, representing 53 per cent of all mobile phone shipments, according to a survey by Strategy Analytics.
    It reports that, with nearly 57 per cent of slotted phone shipments in 2007, the microSD (including microSDHC) slot format is now more popular than the MMC format.
    The microSD format is expected to hit peak penetration of 86 per cent in 2011, after which it will face competition from other, new, high capacity systems, such as the Universal Flash Storage (UFS).
    Steve Entwistle, vice president of the Strategic Technologies within Strategy Analytics, said penetration of slotted phones was already over 85 per cent in many developed countries.
    He was speaking after the publication of the firm’s Removable Memory Card Forecast.
    “We are now seeing significant growth in emerging markets where demand for music and camera phones is taking off,” he said.
    Stuart Robinson, director of the firm’s Handset Component Technologies service, said demand for high capacity cards to store music, images, video and data will trigger significant growth in the high capacity microSDHC format during 2008 and 2009.
    He said strong growth was also expected in embedded memory over the next few years.
    “But the benefits of being able to upsize your capacity and transfer your data to a new phone make memory card slots an essential requirement for all mid-to-high end phones,” he said.
    An earlier Strategy Analytics report predicted that the average capacity of a removable memory card for the global mobile phone market will grow exponentially over the next five years, at an average 120 per cent per year.
    If correct, this would take memory card capacity from 517 megabytes in 2007 to 26 gigabytes in 2012.
    The report “Cellphone Memory Card”, also revealed that revenue from sales of removable memory cards for mobile phones will grow from US$4.8 billion in 2007 to almost US$11.3 billion in 2012.

  • Payments made via mobile phone for goods and services will exceed US$300bn globally by 2013






    The value of payments made using mobile phones for everything from music, tickets and games to gifts will increase five-fold over the next five years.
    This is one of the forecasts made by Juniper Research in a region by region analysis which explores how the mobile phone is developing into a payment tool that will be used by more and more people, more and more often in future.
    Not surprisingly, the report concludes that there is a significant opportunity for mobile payment services, systems, software and supporting services to underpin the processing of the spiralling value of payment transactions by 2013.
    Howard Wilcox , the report’s author, noted that retailers need to move quickly to exploit the opportunity presented, and ensure that they maintain ease of use for their customers who are already familiar with web shopping from their PCs.
    “Merchants in North America and Western Europe are just starting to realise the potential of a mobile web presence as a fourth channel to market,” he added.
    “Retailers should be evaluating the benefits of the mobile web, and be mindful of the success of regular ecommerce sites in generating sales.”
    The findings come as the GSMA, the mobile industry’s global trade body, and the European Payments Council, which represents 8,000 banks, announce plans to work together to accelerate the deployment of services that enable consumers to pay for goods and services using their mobile phones.
    Other highlights from the Juniper Research report include:
    * The ticketing segment will be driven by consumer usage on rail, air and bus networks as well as sports and entertainment events. This will represent over 40 per cent of the global transaction value by 2013
    * The top 2 regions (Far East and W. Europe) will represent over 60 per cent of the US$300bn pa global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2013 for digital and physical goods