LG who appear to be doing better in the mobile market than in the flat screen TV market is set to roll out an impressive new range of phones including their “Secret” model which is set to go up against the Apple iPhone. Also tipped is a “piggy back” bluetooth phone.
Globally and in Australia the Korean consumer electronic giants LG and Samsung are starting to seriously eat into the market share of major European phone makers as well as US manufacturer Motorola who in the past 3 months have seen a 37% slide in market share in the US alone.
Another option for the Australian market is a brand new phone called “Decoy” this could be rolled out with their new “Secret” smart phone.
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| Images: Equiptment Guide |
The LG Decoy, while a basic looking slider style mobile phone from the front, has a unique little trick hidden on the back in the form of a “built-in” Bluetooth headset.
The LG VX8610 will replace the VX8550 Choclate handset and has four touch sensitive buttons around its central trackball. The removable Bluetooth earpiece will be the main selling point of the LG VX8610, while other features include a 2 megapixel camera, QVGA display screen, microbus port, and the trusty microSD expansion slot.
Globally mobile phone sales have fallen by almost a quarter during the first three months of the year as consumers in the USA, UK. And Australia tried to cope with collapsing house prices rising fuel costs and in some markets like Australia mortgage payment increases. A report by Sanford Bernstein, the Wall Street broker, says that new sales of mobiles fell by 23 per cent, marking the first slowdown in years.
Craig Moffett, a telecoms analyst for Sanford Bernstein, said that he expected declines in phone sales to continue despite the recent tax rebates. The findings confirm fears among Wall Street economists, who expect a large dip in consumer confidence to have a huge impact globally on retail sales over the next two years.
Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist for High Frequency Economics, said: “Mobile phones are, on the whole, a discretionary spend item. None of us really need to upgrade to a better model. The outlook for retail sales in the US is horrible. We expect it to be extraordinarily weak for the foreseeable future, and by that I mean definitely this year and probably next. We have not hit the bottom yet.”
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The analyst said that growth was slowing most rapidly among customers with low incomes and children: “It is reasonable to think that in a weak economy, both of these populations would be strapped.”
At the end of the first quarter, Motorola controlled about a quarter of the US mobile handset market, compared with 34 per cent at the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to Strategy Analytics. Over the same period, Samsung boosted its share to 22 per cent while LG rose to 21 per cent.
Elsewhere, Symbian, the mobile software group, reported a sharp slowdown in growth, with shipments up only 17 per cent to 18.5 million units in the three months to March 31 against a growth rate of more than 50 per cent in previous quarters.
