D&T Says Cell Phone Market To Soar in 2005
Deloitte and Touche have released a study agreeing with what the rest of the industry have been saying for some time: cellular phone use worldwide is set to continue to grow in 2005, up to 2 Billion subscribers worldwide. D&T points out that the growth will largely come from developing markets, and that the growth is primarily driven by dropping costs. Voice, as always, is the main driver of adoption, while data revenues will continue to be focused in the areas of ringtones, wallpapers, and basic games. Interestingly, the report also cites that penetration could surpass 100% in some advanced markets, where subscribers use more than one cellular connection. Meanwhile, that's not to say that the US is not showing any growth, looking back, the US has climbed from 97M cellular subs in 2000 to 170M in June 2004, and although growth may be slowing, it's still quite strong. But here's an interesting observation from Techdirt: businesses should be cautious about regarding this total addressable market as 2 Billion... click "Read More" for this discussion. Update: Meanwhile - a report out today from IMS research in the UK says cell-phone unit sales could reach 650M worldwide for 2005. Where D&T said growth will come from developing markets, IMS instead talks about the increasing role of Smartphones. Both views are correct, as the developing world will add more raw subscribers, but in the developed world, we're seeing a shift to more capable handsets.
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