Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the second quarter of 2007 reached 270.9 million units, a 17.4% increase from the same period last year, according to new figures from Gartner. It predicts worldwide mobile phone sales will reach 1.13 billion units in 2007.
Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices research at Gartner, said: “Emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia/Pacific continued to fuel the industry’s growth.
“More mature markets, such as those in Western Europe and North America, picked up after the expected slowdown in the first quarter.”
“Apple stole the limelight in the quarter with the introduction of its iPhone in North America in the last two days of the quarter.”
Milanesi added: “But we will only be able to better assess the impact the phone has had in the North America market in the quarters to come.”
Despite a slowdown in new connections compared to the first quarter of 2007, sales of mobile phones in Western Europe reached 45.4 million units, an 11% increase year-on-year, said Gartner.
The North American handset market continued to exhibit strong growth, with sales to end users reaching 41.4 million units in the second quarter of 2007, a 7% increase from the same period in 2006, whilst in Asia/Pacific, mobile handset sales rose to 95.5 million units, a 40.7% increase from the second quarter of 2006.
A recent forecast from eMarketer predicted that the general mobile ad spending market – along with ad spending that supports mobile multimedia – should reach over $13.8 billion worldwide by 2011 (see Mobile Adspend To Increase).
Meanwhile, in separate research, Gartner said that although there are currently 114 million text messages sent daily in the UK, text messaging will be obsolete within the next five years (see Text Messaging To Be Obsolete Within Five Years).
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