Actually, 400 M this year is a little low [LWN.net]

Actually, 400 M this year is a little low

Posted Sep 1, 2004 17:10 UTC (Wed) by gilb (subscriber, #11728)
In reply to: No, it is accurate by AJWM
Parent article: Cell Phones: Don't Count Linux Out (Business Week)

Electronic News, Setpember 1, 2004:

"According to the firm (IDC), worldwide mobile phone shipments decreased sequentially by 5.9 percent in the March quarter and increased by 29.3 percent year-over-year to 152.7 million units. Additionally, the nascent market for converged mobile devices, or smartphones, posted a sequential decrease of 5.5 percent but a striking year-over-year increase of 85.8 percent."

<snip>

"With 1.5 billion wireless subscribers expected by the end of the year, IDC expects the worldwide mobile phone market to surpass 595 million units shipped in 2004. Through 2008, the market will continue to expand until it reaches nearly an all-replacement sales scenario toward the end of the decade with more than 800 million mobile phones shipping annually.

Broken down, IDC said that sales of 2.5G mobile phones will drive market growth for the next several years with sales of 3G mobile phones finally surpassing the 100 million annual unit mark in 2007. The converged mobile device market, surpassing 20 million units shipped worldwide in 2004, will be dominated throughout the decade by Symbian-powered devices -- Microsoft and PalmSource are expected to mount a long-term challenge, but will have greater difficulty gaining exposure to mainstream mobile phone market volume, IDC reported."

http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA...

Yes, it is an insanely large number. It is why semiconductor vendors start breathing hard anytime a cell phone manufacturer shows up.

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Actually, 400 M this year is a little low

Posted Sep 1, 2004 20:55 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

Yes, it is an insanely large number.

No kidding. I rather suspect that some breathless analysts or vendors have done some ridiculous extrapolation of some transient exponential growth, rather than looking at the reality of the physical limits of the market.

Unless, of course, we're looking at disposable (or almost so) phones. Not completely out of the question, I suppose.

Actually, 400 M this year is a little low

Posted Sep 1, 2004 21:34 UTC (Wed) by gilb (subscriber, #11728) [Link]

Sorry that didn't come across as I intended. The 600 M handsets for 2004 is not unreasonable estimate, after all they did 157 M in the first quarter, which is clearly on pace for 600 M this year.

The stats are (from Gartner):
2001 - 407M
2002 - 432M
2003 - 520M

(Note that 2001 was a very bad year, it was the first year that sales didn't increase year over year. It had been averaging 60% CAGR.)

The above are all "actual" numbers, not predictions. The analysts have to estimate the numbers sold, but the are accurate to probably +/-5%.

These sort of predictions for the next year are taken pretty seriously by the suppliers and vendors, so the analysts don't do the usual "hockey-stick" approach to predicting volumes.

600M of any complete product is an insanely big number and yet the cell phone manufacturers will likely hit it this year. (PCs, including laptops are about 150 M/year, cars worldwide are around 40-50M/yr).