INTERVIEW: Gartner Sees Smartphone Sales Worth $200 Billion in 2012
STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- Nokia and other handest makers are expected to see enormous growth in smartphone sales over the next few years, Carolina Milanesi, Gartner research director for mobile devices, told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.
Smartphones, handheld devices with PC-like capabilities such as Internet access and a host of bolt-on applications, are already big business, thanks in part to the hype surrounding Apple's iPhone.
"We are expecting the smartphone market to grow strongly with royalty free operating systems like Symbian, Android, and Linux pushing deeper down into product portfolios," Milanesi said. "Apple's iPhone isn't huge in sales volume, but it helped energize the market. People are now walking into stores and asking for a smartphone, something that didn't really happen in the past."
The smartphone market is expected to grow 52% this year compared with 2007, to 190 million units. That's 15%, or $65 billion-worth, of the total 1.28 billion handsets expected to be sold this year.
In 2012, Milanesi expects smartphone unit sales to reach over 700 million of the total 1.8 billion handset market; that's 65%, or $200 billion-worth, of the total $312 billion mobile phone market at that time.
"Royalty free operating systems will help reduce the cost of handsets in the future," said Milanesi. "Operators will push phone makers to get more smartphones to the market since it is easier for them to deploy services."
She also said increased competition from Chinese manufacturers such as ZTE will push prices down, making the phones even more accessible.
"Nokia has a strong foothold in the smartphone category already and that will continue to be the case, but others such as [BlackBerry maker] Research In Motion are working their way up," she said.
"Going forward, Samsung is transitioning well toward smartphones, while LG is still struggling a bit. It is hard to say what Sony Ericsson will do, but we don't expect its XPERIA X1 to make a big sales splash when released later this year," she said.
Milanesi also said the sale of replacement phones slowed in the second quarter, which hurt revenue and average selling prices.
"The economic environment continued to negatively impact mobile phones sales in both mature and emerging markets," said Milanesi. "Consumers in mature markets continued to favor mid-tier devices over high-end devices, while new subscribers continued to join mobile networks in emerging markets during the quarter."
She said she expects sales to begin to bounce back in the second half this year as companies release new products and due to the Christmas shopping season.
-By Adam Ewing, Dow Jones Newswires; +46 8 545 130 95; adam.ewing@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
Posted to the site on 27th August 2008
