Forecasting the Recovery of the Mobile Handset Market-place



Author:Jake Saunders | Vice President of Forecasting

2009-06-09
A week or so back we completed an update to ABI Research's Mobile Handset forecasts. This is a not a straightforward exercise for a number of reasons. While this forecast has historically exhibited the classic exponential sigmoidal curve, this principle is starting to change. Yes, handset sales are, in part, a function of net increases in subscribers, but then not every "newly" reported subscriber is a true "new, wallet carrying" subscriber. We have had prepaid subscriptions for a while now but you had to carry around at least two mobile phones! Dual SIM (even triple SIM) phones are proving popular in emerging markets like China, India, Russia, as well as developed countries. Why the interest? End users wish to minimize interconnection costs. As a result, one needs to be increasingly wary of the figures operators provide for net additions in reported subscriptions.

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