SAN JOSE -- Worldwide shipments of mobile telephone handsets declined 9% to 94.4 million units in the third quarter compared to 103.2 million in the same period last year, said Dataquest Inc. here today.
"The mobile phone industry has been impacted by repeated delays in the availability of general packet radio service (GPRS) terminals and the effect of the widespread economic downturn on regions where mobile connection growth has traditionally been high, such as Latin America," said Bryan Prohm, senior analyst with Dataquest's Mobile Communications Worldwide research group.
One region hit hard in Q3 was Western Europe, which accounted for about one-third of handset sales in 1999 and 2000, said Ben Wood, senior analyst in the mobile communications research group. "In an unprecedented development, shipments actually fell in Western Europe from the second quarter to the third quarter of 2001," he said. Dataquest today did not release specific figures for Europe.
Nokia Group of Finland topped suppliers of mobile telephones with 33.4% market share in the third quarter, or 31.55 million units. Nokia's unit shipments declined 2.7% from 32.42 million in Q3 2000, said Dataquest. Motorola Inc.'s third-quarter shipments grew 1.6% to 14.77 million vs. 14.54 million in the period last year, while LM Ericsson saw its cell phone shipments drop 27.7% in Q3 to 7.11 million vs. 10.41 million in the quarter last year, Dataquest said.
A year ago, about 412 million phones were sold worldwide, and most forecasts show handset volumes flat to down slightly in 2001.
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