Global economic slump impacts phone shipments

There is no denying that the current global economic crisis is hitting everyone hard. According to Strategy Analytics, a digital analysis firm, reported global mobile phone shipments fell 10 percent in Q4 2008 when compared to the same time period last year. Year-over-year rates seem to have dwindled for mostly everyone in the wireless industry during this economic slump. There were a total of 295 million units shipped out and caused the industry’s slowest growth rate since 2001. This number pales in comparison to the 329 million units in Q4 2007. Bonny Joy, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics said, “Retailers have been de-stocking due to credit tightness, while consumers delayed purchase because of fears of a recession." Some more bad news included Motorola declining 54 percent, Sony Ericsson 21 percent, and Nokia 15 percent. Even Apple who recently announced their quarterly earnings saw lower-than-expected 4.4 million iPhones worldwide in Q4 2008. One of the few bright spots in all this was that Samsung performed the best of the best with an all-time high of 18 percent global market share.

source: Yahoo