Mobile phone sales continue to fall

Worldwide mobile phone sales have fallen in the second quarter for the first time.

Sales fell by nearly seven million in the three months to the end of June compared with January to March. Usually the first quarter is slightly lower than the second.

Some 89.8 million handsets were sold in April to June, compared with 96.6 million in January to March. In comparison with April to June 2000, eight million handsets fewer were sold this year, according to a report from Gartner Dataquest.

Gartner analyst Ben Wood said that sales in western Europe had been affected because operators such as Vodafone, Orange and BT Cellnet were no longer prepared to subsidise handsets to the same degree as previously, in order to quickly gain new customers.

Analysts have warned that the market is nearing saturation, but believe that many existing users will choose to replace their handset with a more technologically advanced model.

Gartner predicted that the arrival of more GPRS handsets later in the year will see global sales for 2001 close in on 450 million, compared with 400 million in 2000.

The analyst's figures show that market leader Nokia's share fell to 34.8 per cent for April to June 2001 (from 35.3 per cent in January to March 2001), followed by Motorola on 14.8 per cent (13.2), Ericsson on 8.3 per cent (6.8), Siemens on 7.9 per cent (6.9) and Samsung on 6.9 per cent (6.3).