All fingers point to the cell phone market rebounding this year

With all the memorable handsets that were launched in 2009, there is one thing in the wireless industry that really stuck out to become a sore eye – the market fell 1 percent; making it the first decline in eight years. Although most people would argue that we are still going through the economic downturn that's managed to stick around much longer, research firm Gartner and analyst Carolina Milanesi expects a transformation to occur in 2010 – they're forecasting an 11 to 13 percent growth in the market this year. "The economy seems to be stabilizing more into a recovery trend than we forecast back in December. Sales will return to low-double-digit growth, but competition will continue to put a strain on vendors' margins." Milanesi said. Most manufacturers out there are eying the lucrative smartphone market where it's expected to see an astounding increase by 46 percent from the 172.4 million units sold last year. Some of these devices that are leading the pact are inexpensive models that are extremely affordable at just over $100 excluding operator subsidies. With that in mind, it'll most likely affect the fall of the average sale prices in 2010 – which will be of course aided by an improving economy and consumers upgrading to cheap smartphones.

source: Reuters