A stack of GfK stats suggest nothing but growth for the smartphone space.
After many years of constant growth, the global electronic goods market declined by over two per cent in 2009 compared to 2008, reaching $681 billion. There's still good growth in LCD TVs, laptops, HD DVD players (Blu Ray) and smartphones. That's good, But in 2008, more than ten products were driving the market.
It would appear that we are at the end of a cycle of innovation, and are seeing an end to the amazing growth in many key sectors - with satnav down 15 per cent in 2008/9, multimedia players down 11 per cent and digital cameras down 11 per cent.
And you can include mobiles too.
The total mobile phone market sold 1.1 billion devices in 2009, down five per cent to mark its first ever decline. GfK forecasts it will return to growth by Q2 2010, although an annualised growth for the whole of 2010 is unlikely.
Where growth is evident is at the top and bottom ends of the device market.
On one hand there is the demand for cheaper prepay phones or short-term contracts. On the other there is consumer demand for a more sophisticated handset (as seen with the shift towards 3G) with open OS, touchscreen facilities and high speed up and downloading.
Smartphones now account for 11 per cent of the mobile market; a two per cent increase over last year. The development has been strongest in Scandinavia (in Norway 22 per cent of mobile users have smartphones in 2008, while in Finland it's 27 per cent), and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia 28 per cent and UAE 23 per cent). The UK stands at 18 per cent, but this is dwarfed by Hong Kong where close to a third of all phones sold are smartphones.
Within the sector, the touchscreen form factor has started to dominate. In Europe, it grew from only five per cent of the market in 2008 to 14 per cent. In France and the UK touchscreens are closer to 25 per cent of all phones sold. This Christmas there were over 100 touchscreen devices for UK consumers to choose from.
Touchscreen phones generate three times more downloading, streaming and browsing than all other devices. In addition 3G phones account for over 85 per cent of all traffic. Contract customers account for 91 per cent of downloads, although prepay is growing faster.
The internet as a method of handset purchase is also on the up, mirroring the trends in other consumer technology markets. In the UK over 15 per cent of all devices are bought online. This is not purely a contract phone phenomenon as this Christmas, one in ten prepay phones will be purchased online.
And what of the future? Well, it helps to look east. In Japan biometrics, NFC and GPS are all booming. This means face or fingerprint recognition will become more prevalent soon. NFC enables mobile money and micropayments to flourish, much has been made of this for the future but at the moment the industry is still in its infancy in most markets.
We have also seen the growth of dual SIM mainly in relatively less developed markets (ten per cent of China market and 15 per cent in Nigeria) but it is something which could find its way to Europe soon.
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