TMCnet News
Nine Million 3G Phone March in Q2 '05Research shows nine million WCDMA phones shipped in Q2 2005.
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, a total of 9 million WCDMA (3G) phones were shipped worldwide during the second quarter, April to June of 2005.
Nokia topped the list of vendor-rankings, surprisingly for the first time, with a 17 per cent global share.
Chris Ambrosio, Director of the Strategy Analytics Wireless Device Strategies service, noted that at 17 percent, Nokia's 3G market share is almost half its overall global total of 33 percent.
WCDMA (3G) technology, which accounted for just 5 per cent of total handset sales during Q2 2005, remains a market in the early stages of development, but Asian vendors NEC and LG have been overtaken by Nokia in the battle for dominance in the WCDMA market, where phones are priced below $200 wholesale.
The WCDMA market's cooled off a bit. Dell'Oro Group has reported that while the total mobility infrastructure market grew 13 percent in the second quarter of 2005 over the same quarter a year ago, for the first half of 2005, growth in the WCDMA market slowed to 13 percent over the same period in 2004. For comparison sake, the WCDMA market in the second half of 2004 grew 44 percent over the same period in 2003.
Strategy Analytics' Advanced Buyer Panel recently rated the Nokia 6680 as the best-in-class 3G phone in Western Europe. Neil Mawston, Nokia's Associate Director, Wireless Device Strategies said the company's "regaining ground in high-end device segments that it has lost to Motorola, Samsung, LG and others over the last couple of years." Other findings from Strategy Analytics' Global Handset Market Share Update for Q2 2005 include that Audiovox of the US reached its highest level in CDMA handsets for two years, due to aggressive promotion from new owner, UTStarcom. Nokia announced recently that, despite speculation to the contrary, it won't include Apple's iTunes software on its N91 music phone. Nokia has an agreement with Microsoft about including software enabling music transfer. Kari Tuutti, a spokesman at Nokia's Multimedia unit, which makes the N91 said the N91 "is based on an operating system that allows external developers, including Apple, to develop their own software to run on the phone," according to Dow Jones:
"It would therefore be possible for Apple, or someone else, to offer iTunes software that can be downloaded and installed on the phone." -----
David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
|