Mobile phone handset manufactures will see their revenues fall in 2006, with a new study from iSuppli forecasting wholesale prices to drop by 9% in 2006.
According to eMarketer the market may be over supplied, with 850 million handsets made in 2006, 40 million more than in 2005. Informa Telecoms & Media recently reported that just 743 million handsets were sold in 2005, signalling a slowdown in the industry.
Resulting from this fall, iSuppli projects total handset revenues to drop to $110 billion in 2006, from $115 billion in 2005. The company expects wholesale prices to stabilise in subsequent years, with handset manufacturers seeing revenue back at 2005 levels by 2009.
A earlier report from Informa Telecoms & Media confirms the expected slowdown, predicting handset sales to rise at a reduced rate from now until 2010, forecasting the technology to reach 889 million by 2010, up just 156 million from 743 million in 2005 (see Increasing Mobile Phone Penetration Causing Providers To Deepen Content).
In order to boost this forecast, Informa claims that service providers must look towards offering other features, such as music players and mobile television, with the report claiming that digital media broadcasting receivers on handsets could be an important revenue maker.
Mobile television is already proving popular with consumers, with interim results from the Oxford Mobile TV trial showing that 83% of triallists are satisfied with the service provided (see UK Consumers Keen For Mobile TV).
In the US, eMarketer projects that 3 million US consumers will watch TV programming on their mobile phones in 2006, up from 1.2 million in 2005. By 2009, the analyst expects there will be 15 million video viewers, an estimated 6.2% of total mobile subscribers (see US Mobile TV Subscriptions To Hit 15 Million By 2009).
Meanwhile, Juniper Research predicts worldwide mobile television revenues to increase rapidly before the end of the decade, peaking at $7.6 billion in 2010, up from an estimated $136 million this year (see Mobile TV Set For Massive Revenue Growth).
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