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| Monday, 18 August 2008 | |
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Demand for Smartphones holds up as iPhone rival launch nears…
Although growth slowed in EMEA Smartphone market in Q2 2008, total shipments of 12.6mn still made it the second biggest quarter ever in volume terms. So says the latest analysis from UK-headquartered Canalys. Mirroring the strength of Smartphone demand across the Atlantic, according to Strategy Analytics, overall mobile handset shipments to In EMEA Canalys estimates that Smartphones represented 13% of all mobile phone shipments. Nokia remained the market leader by some margin, but the other vendors in the top five posted much higher than average year-on-year growth, with second-placed RIM closing the market share gap by several points, and HTC, Motorola and Samsung more than doubling their shipments. Canalys says the regional Smartphone market continues to be boosted by user demand for high-end features. This is unlikely to be dramatically affected by the economic situation in the short term, though operators will likely become even more unwilling to heavily subsidise high-end devices without adequate proof of return, and contract lengths and the time between upgrades are expected to increase. The company estimates that 58% of the Smartphones that shipped in EMEA in Q2 had integrated Wi-Fi, 13% had stylus or finger-driven touch screens and 38% had integrated GPS. There are a couple of flies in the EMEA Smartphone ointment, though.“Today, many owners are not making full use of their Smartphone’s features,” observes Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham. “Concern over usage costs is still a big barrier, though wider availability of flat rate data plans will help, and usability still needs to improve for certain applications on many devices. People are also wary of draining their battery and not being able to make calls. Even so, adds Cunningham, “…there is clear demand for those features and applications, and advances in battery technology would enable quite substantial changes in usage patterns, with all the service revenue benefits that would bring.” Over in John Williamson |
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