2007: The Final year of Cell Phone Growth?

by Razib Ahmed

For the last one decade, we have seen tremendous growth in sale of cell phone sets and connections around the world. Particularly, in the last 5 years, the markets of developing countries like China, India, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh have seen huge growth. Both the cell phone manufacturers and operators have benefited from this boom. Well, it seems that the party is going to be over after 2007.

BBC reported:

Worldwide sales of mobile phones will hit a billion next year but the days of massive growth could be over, says an industry report.

According to research firm Informa Telecoms and Media, the battle now will be persuading users to upgrade their phones regularly.

New services such as mobile TV will compete with improved cameras, more memory and cutting-edge design.

But the long-awaited switch to 3G could be some time off, the report said.

The report predicts that only a quarter of all mobile phones sold by 2008 will be 3G – which might not be quite the news operators, desperate to recoup the money they spent on third-generation networks, wanted to hear.

Two factors are going to contribute for this slow down. In the developed world, almost everyone has a mobile phone set and since the handset manufactures are not bringing out too many sets with new features, the existing users do not feel tempted to buy new sets. On the other hand, in the developing world, most people will have bought mobile phone sets by 2007. So, after that the growth will not occur rapidly like now.

For the handset manufacturers the main challenge will be to create new features for their sets. Camera and television- these two features will attract the consumers of tomorrow. So, the key challenge is to present the consumers mobile phone sets with good camera and television facilities at an affordable price.