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| Tuesday, 29 July 2008 | |
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Touchscreen–equipped handsets exceed 230mn by 2012.
Touchscreen-equipped mobile handsets sales have been building steadily for over a year now, and a new report from IMS Research forecasts that growth will become even stronger. Although there were fewer than 30mn touchscreen phones sold in 2007, the research company’s analysis ‘Touchscreens & Input Technologies for According to IMS there are unmistakable signs that touchscreens are about to significantly increase their presence in the mobile handset market. In particular recent reports and announcements from the three largest mobile phone manufacturers have highlighted an increase in production of phones using touch technology. In July, LG revealed that it had sold 7mn touchscreen handsets. This announcement came just five quarters after LG launched its very first touchscreen mobile phone. Again, Samsung recently released the Instinct, a full touchscreen handset, through Sprint. One week after that launch, Sprint announced that the Instinct had already become the best selling EV-DO device in the carrier’s history. Meantime, Apple reported selling 1mn of its new 3G iPhone handsets in the first three days of its release. “The original iPhone was the catalyst that created this huge market interest in touchscreen phones. The fact that it was not only popular with consumers, but also helped drive data revenues proved how important touchscreen handsets can be,” judges IMS Research analyst and report author Femi Omoni. “Now all of the network operators and handset manufacturers want a piece of the pie.” The touchscreen growth that IMS Research is predicting will apparently not be driven solely by the Smartphone segment. IMS Research reckons that touchscreens will increasingly penetrate the much larger feature phone segment. The company cites as evidence the fact that Nokia just announced that its initial foray into the touchscreen market will be targeted at the ‘volume market’. Also running the rule over touchscreen mobiles – or more particularly over the part that will be played by the iPhone in the ”We estimate the Apple iPhone will account for 6.3mn of the 18.1mn touchscreen phones sold in the United States during January to December 2008, for an impressive 35 percent marketshare,” says Strategy Analytics analyst Bonny Joy. “We expect the release of the heavily-subsidised 3G iPhone 2.0 on July 11th to catalyse a healthy spurt in touchscreen volumes during the second half of the year.” “Apple is in a strong position today but its rivals are not standing still,” adds Neil Mawston, director of Strategy Analytics. “Samsung and LG already offer numerous, popular touchscreen models such as the Instinct and Voyager, while Blackberry and Nokia are scheduled to launch their own portfolios in the coming months with the Thunder and Tube. Clearly, the competition is rising fast and hanging on to that 35 percent marketshare will be a major challenge for Apple in 2009.” John Williamson |
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