The mBoom
That far off rumbling sound you've been hearing for the past few months? That was the new telecommunications boom starting.
I. 2003 and Preliminary Q1 2004 Handset Unit Sales
Company 2003 2003 ¦ Q4 2003 Q4 2003 ¦ Q1 2004 Q4 2003
Sales ¹ Share ¦ Sales ¹ Share ¦ Sales ² E Share
¦ ¦
Nokia 180.7m 34.7% ¦ 54.6m 34.2% ¦ 44.7m 30.0%
Motorola 75.2m 14.5% ¦ 22.4m 14.0% ¦ 25.3m 17.0%
Samsung 54.5m 10.5% ¦ 16.5m 10.3% ¦ 20.1m 13.5%
Siemens 43.8m 8.4% ¦ 15.0m 9.4% ¦ 13.0m ³ 8.7%
SEricsson 26.7m 5.1% ¦ 7.9m 4.9% ¦ 8.8m 5.9%
LG 26.2m 5.0% ¦ 9.7m 6.1% ¦ 8.75m 5.8%
Others 113.0m 21.8% ¦ 33.5m 21.1% ¦ 29.25m ³ 19.6%
====== ====== ¦ ====== ====== ¦ ====== ======
Total 520.0m 100.0% ¦ 159.6m 100.0% ¦ 148.9m 100.0%
I found this chart in this post on the boards at Motley Fool. You need to have a subscription or sign up for a free 30 day trial, but it's worth the effort - the post has a ton more data in it, including break downs by analyst, technology, manufacturer and more. The chart above is gold.
I wish I had the time and effort to go through and provide links to all the positive news items from the telecommunications industry I've read in the past week or so. Basically, besides AT&T Wireless blowing up and Nokia's missteps, everyone else is doing better than expected. Moto and Samsung are booming, Verizon has added 1.4 million customers and more.
The important point to make from these numbers is not the total handsets (there were similar numbers of phones sold last year) but the *type* of handsets. For the last six months or so, a vast majority of those phones shipped are color, Java-enabled, MMS-enabled, data-capable phones. In the next quarter coming up, a good chunk of the phones are going to be MIDP 2.0/WAP 2.0 phones, if not all of them. By the end of the year, almost 600 million new phones will be sold and all will be capable of mobile data services and applications. 150+ million will be camera phones, and a good percentage will be advanced smart phones too.
And not only are the handsets arriving in vast numbers, data services have arrived as well. GPRS and CDMA2000 1x is rolled out worldwide, EDGE is here in the U.S and 3G has arrived in Europe and Asia. We have the devices and we have the connectivity. Woohoo! Finally! The time many of us have been waiting for since the end of the Internet Boom in 2000 is here.
It's the mBoom! Get ready...
-Russ