Replacements fuel cell-phone growth

The UAE mobile phone market is growing but that growth is now fuelled mainly by the demand for replacements rather than by new subscribers, according to Abdul Jabar Al Sayegh, chairman of Al Sayegh Brothers Trading.

Speaking during the launch of the latest mobile phone offering from LG Electronics - the Symphony W3000 - Al Sayegh said the UAE had one of the highest per capita penetrations of mobile phones in the world, with consumers changing mobile phones once a year.

"Current GSM users in the UAE number 2.3 million, which is about 65 per cent of the population," said P.C. Choi, managing director of LG Electronics Gulf FZE.

He said the consumer trend is towards early adoption of technology with the young leading the demand. "This makes the UAE an extremely attractive market for LG's latest mobile products."

Choi expects to reach $1.15 billion in total LG sales from Middle East and Africa this year - and projects 1 million LG mobiles in the territory by the end of next year.

Local sales are aided by re-export demand from certain CIS and African markets where LG does not have distributors, added Al Sayegh.

He pointed out that Middle East is the only region where mobile phone growth continues to be as high as 20-25 per cent even as the industry worldwide is down because of saturation.

"My target is to be among the top-three brands in 2002," said Al Sayegh who is UAE distributor for LG mobile phones. LG entered the market in February, and expects to launch three more phones before the year-end. A GPRS-enabled phone is on the cards.

The new Wap-enabled Symphony W3000 is just 80 grams with talk time of up to 3.5 hours and standby of up to 250 hours. The Arabic-enabled phone can take up to 1,024 characters for messaging and a phone book memory of 200 numbers with five fields.

It has changeable covers, brightly lit keypad and side lighting, with a bright blue backlit 4-line LED display. It measures just 102x54x20 mm.