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cell phone handset manufacturers

Page history last edited by Brian D Butler 13 years, 7 months ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents:


 

 

Manufacturers

Nokia Corporation is currently the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones, with a global device market share of approximately 36% in Q1 of 2007.[4] Other mobile phone manufacturers include Apple Inc., Audiovox (now UT Starcom), Benefon, BenQ-Siemens, High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC), Fujitsu, Kyocera, LG Mobile, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC, Neonode, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pantech Curitel, Philips, Research In Motion, Sagem, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, Sierra Wireless, SK Teletech, Sonim Technologies, Sony Ericsson, T&A Alcatel, and Toshiba. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from) mobile phones.

 

The mobile phone manufacturers can be grouped into two. The top five are available in practically all countries and comprise about 75% of all phones sold. A second tier of small manufacturers exists with phones mostly sold only in specific regions or for niche markets. The top five in order of market share are Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, SonyEricsson and LG.

 

 

Massive Market

 

Several countries, including the UK, now have more mobile phones than people. There are over five hundred million active mobile phone accounts in China, as of 2007.  Luxembourg has the highest mobile phone penetration rate in the world, at 164% in December 2001. In Hong Kong the penetration rate reached 139.8% of the population in July 2007. The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005. The subscriber count reached 2.7 billion by end of 2006 according to Informa, and 3.3 billion by November, 2007, thus reaching an equivalent of over half the planet's population. Around 80% of the world's population enjoys mobile phone coverage as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010

 

At present, Africa has the largest growth rate of cellular subscribers in the world,  its markets expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets.  The availability of prepaid or 'pay-as-you-go' services, where the subscriber is not committed to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth in Africa as well as in other continents.

 

On a numerical basis, India is the largest growth market, adding about 6 million cell phones every month. With 256.55 million cell phones, market penetration in the country is still low at 22.52%. India expects to reach 500 million subscribers by end of 2010.

 

Growth

 

In less than twenty years, the mobile telephone has gone from being rare, expensive equipment of the business elite to a pervasive, low-cost personal item. In many countries, mobile telephones outnumber land-line telephones; in the U.S., 50 percent of children have mobile telephones.[14] In many young adults' households it has supplanted the land-line telephone. The mobile phone is banned in some countries, such as North Korea.

 

 

Different worldwid standards

 

There are three major technical standards for the current generation of mobile phones and networks, and two major standards for the next generation 3G phones and networks. All European, African and many Asian countries have adopted a single system, GSM, which is the only technology available on all continents and in most countries and covers over 74% of all subscribers on mobile networks. In many countries, such as the United States, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, and South Korea GSM co-exists with other internationally adopted standards such as CDMA and TDMA, as well as national standards such as iDEN in the USA and PDC in Japan. Over the past five years several dozen mobile operators (carriers) have abandoned networks on TDMA and CDMA technologies, switching over to GSM.

 

With third generation (3G) networks, which are also known as IMT-2000 networks, about three out of four networks are on the W-CDMA (also known as UMTS) standard, usually seen as the natural evolution path for GSM and TDMA networks. One in four 3G networks is on the CDMA2000 1x EV-DO technology. Some analysts count a previous stage in CDMA evolution, CDMA2000 1x RTT, as a 3G technology whereas most standardization experts count only CDMA2000 1x EV-DO as a true 3G technology. Because of this difference in interpreting what is 3G, there is a wide variety in subscriber counts. As of June 2007, on the narrow definition there are 200 million subscribers on 3G networks. By using the more broad definition, the total subscriber count of 3G phone users is 475 million.

 

 

 

see also : 

Mobile Web

cell phone handset manufacturers

telecom providers

cell phone software

tech trends to watch

cell phone adoption in developing countries

telephone systems around the world

 

 

 

Opinion of a VC: 2008 predictions from a VC: Android will succeed… 

 

It’s becoming customary among VC bloggers to make predictions for 2008. At the risk of educating my competitors, here are my technology predictions for 2008.

1) Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance will succeed. By this, I mean handsets will become more like PC’s and wireless carriers will become more like landline DSL providers. This is a bold statement because both handset makers (like Nokia) and carriers (like Vodafone) don’t want this to happen. So why do I predict a change in an industry where dinosaurs were surviving for such a long time?

 

Because a meteor the size of Texas hit the wireless industry in 2007 and it was called the iPhone. For the first time in the wireless industry, the handset chose the carrier as opposed to the carrier choosing the handset. The product was so impactful and well designed that some carriers agreed to share 30-40% of their data revenues with Apple in order to have the device on their network. That could be a very meaningful $200 dollars to Apple (rough math, based reports of 40 percent of a $30 data bill every month over two years). Why did carriers agree to that? Because the carriers did the math and the revenue share probably was equivalent to the customer acquisition cost they’d otherwise have to pay which, in the US at least, is about $200.In return for that bargain, the carriers gave up ALL revenue from applications, ringtones etc. The consumers wanted it, they gave it, and doing so opened up the market.

 

In doing so, they catalyzed the next innovation from Google. Android and the Open Handset Alliance enable other people to quickly create new iPhones. It creates an environment that lets developers focus on what they do best, which is writing innovative applications. So somebody can come up with a device so compelling that it too will be able to chose their carrier (if carriers need a nudge, Google can share search revenues; if carriers need a punch, Google will fund an open carrier). Once that happens, the carriers become a dumb pipe, but a dumb pipe with similar economics as before, because they won’t have as large customer acquisition costs.

 

The second reason carriers may embrace Android is so they don’t have to be held hostage by Nokia, the world’s largest phone maker which is exerting increasing pressure on carriers. Nokia is even building an ad network and making carriers pay them a piece of their ad revenues. Carriers, especially the European ones, are so dependent on Nokia that they may welcome a cheap Android phone that has a few killer apps built by young application developers.

 

Which brings me to my third and final reason why Android will succeed:the developers. They’re frustrated. It is frustrating to write mobile apps if you have to test them with 100s of handset each running a slightly different operating system, in slightly different carrier networks. Getting apps and phones certified is a big daunting, time-consuming and frustrating task. Palm will attest to that, having lost 25% of its market cap because it missed certification. Android sets these developers free.

 

So, between independently innovative products, a tough supplier to the market, frustrated developers and a tough carrier business model, this industry is ripe for big changes, and I predict it will start happening in 2008.

 

 

 

Links from Wikipedia

 

 

 

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