Mobile market growth falls - Poor first quarter influencing the rest

By Jayant Mishra @ Monday, July 14, 2008 9:31 AM

Section - Telecoms/Mobile

Research firm Gartner has made a second forecast for mobile phone growth in 2008, altering its previous forecast. According to the new forecast the growth in mobile market will drop and will only grow by 10-11% in 2008.

In May, Gartner forecast a growth of 10-15% by 2008. Shares in Nokia and Ericsson lost most of their earlier gains on the news. Carolina Milanesi, head of mobile device research at Gartner said 'Signals for a weaker than expected second quarter has arrived from Sony Ericsson as well as some component manufacturers”.

Sony-Ericsson was alarmed by the fact that it would make no profit in the April-June quarter due to declining demand for its expensive phones. Milanesi said “Despite expecting a stronger second half, we feel that the weakness of the first half has pulled the overall year growth down to 10-11%.' X