EMEA posts 28.26% rise in smart phone shipments

Dubai: Smart phone shipments into Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) reached 12.57 million in the second quarter of 2008, a year-on-year growth of 28.26 per cent, research firm Canalys said.

But the report said growth slowed when compared to the first quarter, when it was 44 per cent, to the lowest figure seen for 18 months. Despite this, it was the second biggest quarter on record for smart phone shipments in the region.

"Smart phones represented 13 per cent of all mobile phone shipments. Nokia remained the market leader by some margin, but the other vendors in the top five posted much higher than average year-on-year growth, with second-placed RIM closing the market share gap by several points, and HTC, Motorola and Samsung more than doubling their shipments," said Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham.

The report said 38 per cent of these smart phones had built-in GPS while 58 per cent had integrated WiFi and 13 per cent of smart phone devices had stylus or finger-driven touch screens.

He said both HTC and RIM have been making steady progress toward the one million shipments per quarter in the region, but they are expected to be overtaken by Apple in third quarter following the launch of iPhone 3G in many countries in the region.

Strong demand

The smart phone market continues to be boosted by user demand for high-end features. This is unlikely to be dramatically affected by the economic situation in the short term, though operators will likely become even more unwilling to heavily subsidise high-end devices without adequate proof of return, and contract lengths and the time between upgrades are expected to increase.

"Today, many owners are not making full use of their smart phone's features.

"Concern over usage costs is still a big barrier, though wider availability of flat rate data plans will help, and usability still needs to improve for certain applications on many devices. People are also wary of draining their battery and not being able to make calls.

"Battery life isn't helped by having GPS and WiFi turned on, nor by having a large, bright screen for navigation or web browsing. But there is clear demand for those features and applications, and advances in battery technology would enable quite substantial changes in usage patterns, with all the service revenue benefits that would bring," said Pete Cunningham.

"About 4.8 million port-able navigation devices and 4.7 million integrated GPS smart phones were shipped into the region during the quarter," said Canalys analyst Tim Shepherd.