Worldwide mobile phone sales up 22%

Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 205.4 million units in the third quarter of 2005, a 22 per cent increase from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc.

This is the biggest quarter on record since Gartner started tracking the market on a quarterly basis in 2001.

Gartner expects worldwide mobile handset sales in Q4 to reach 810 million units in 2005.

"Year on year sales grew in all regions as replacement sales in mature markets such as Western Europe and North America continued to drive growth while users in emerging markets joined mobile networks and acquired their first mobile device," said Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for mobile terminals research at Gartner, based in Egham, UK.

In the third quarter of 2005, Nokia delivered another solid performance at a worldwide level with Western Europe and Asia Pacific making up for North America and Latin America, where sales were weaker.

During the quarter, Nokia started shipping ten new devices, five for the Global System for Mobile Communications markets and five for the code division multiple access market.

Wideband-CDMA sales continued to show Nokia's strength in this market with the Nokia 6680 being the most widely offered handset among operators, including Vodafone KK that recently added it to its portfolio in Japan.

Motorola experienced the largest market share increase among the top five vendors in the third quarter of 2005 and widened the gap with Samsung. Motorola did well with sales of the RAZR phone, with 12 million units sold by the end of September.

With prices falling and additional colors introduced, this phone has grown in popularity and raised Motorola's profile in the market. Despite offering close to a dozen wideband-CDMA models, Motorola has been suffering in this area as overall sales have not matched expectations but also as competitors such as Nokia and Samsung started to focus more on this market.

Samsung remained in the third position, with 25.7 million of phones sold, and its market share totaled 12.5 per cent, however it lost ground to Motorola as the company suffered from inventory build up this quarter and continued not to address the emerging markets as aggressively as Motorola and Nokia have.

In Asia-Pacific, mobile terminals sales reached 52.2 million units in the third quarter, a 27 per cent increase over the same period last year. All countries in the region experienced healthy growth, especially in India and China.