Report: Global Demand for Mobile Phones Set to Soar

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 10, 2004 - 10:25am.

London -- Demand for mobile phones is surging the world over, according a new report conducted by market research Gartner. The report found that total global sales of mobile handsets soared by 34% to more than 153 million units in the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Gartner said that such a good start to the year could mean that as many as 600 million handsets would be sold by year's end. In Western Europe, where demand was much stronger than expected, the recent launch of 3G services by Vodafone (U.K.), T-Mobile (Germany) and TIM (Italy) should lead to a considerable rise in 3G phone sales in the second quarter, Gartner said. Although its market share in Western Europe shrank from 34% to 29%, Finnish giant Nokia still leads the pack after selling more than 44.2 million handsets, a 5-million-unit year-on-year increase. Nokia's loss was mostly Motorola's gain, and the company pointed to particularly robust sales in Europe as the reason behind its increase in sales from 16.7 million units in the first quarter last year to more than 25 million units this year.
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