Open Source Featured Article

Despite the rising popularity of smartphones, and open source Google (News - Alert) Android-based devices in particular, an international IT consulting and market research firm today is calling for worldwide mobile phone shipments to drop 9.1 percent this year.

 

Officials at London-based Ovum (News - Alert) say the recession-fueled decline will affect all regions, including emerging markets, before 2010 sees a turnaround.

 

According to Adam Leach, devices principal analyst at Ovum and co-author of “Mobile phone forecast pack 2008-2014,” 2009 signals the collapse of the market for mid-tier handsets.

 

“This has had a polarizing effect on the handset market with vendors and mobile operators focusing on two types of handset – those targeting the low-end and high-end segments,” Leach said. “This in turn has quickened the replacement of 2G in favour of 3G handsets, with high-end 2G handset shipments suffering the most from the shift.”

 

The forecast – which echoes what we’ve heard from the world’s largest cell phone maker, Nokia (News - Alert) – comes even as smartphones, spurred by the meteoric rise of Apple’s iPhone 3G, and an online App Store business model that’s spawned copycats throughout the industry, has analysts calling for 900 percent growth this year in global Android (News - Alert) smartphone shipments.

 

Officials at the international firm, whose U.S. headquarters are in Boston, say support from developers, vendors and operators is driving adoption of the open source devices.

 

Tom Kang, the Strategy Analytics (News - Alert) analyst who authored “Global Smartphone Vendor Market Share by Region: 2008,” said the Android mobile OS gained traction in the United States during the second half of last year.

 

“Android is expanding from a low base and it is consequently outgrowing the iPhone OS from Apple, which we estimate will grow at a relatively lower 79 percent annually in 2009,” Kang said.

 

Even so, those popular devices can’t swing the entire cell phone market with them.

 

According to Ovum, this down economy has artificially extended replacement rates for handsets during 2009.

 

For Leach, the main upside driver for growth beyond this year is from volumes in emerging markets such as the Asia-Pacific.

 

“Connection growth in these regions is still fuelling handset shipments; however, shipment growth will trend below connection growth due to a strong second-hand market in these regions,” Leach said. “The secondary upside driver for growth is from the replacement of 2G networks with 3G networks, which will impact mature markets first.”