Worldwide phone sales boom as Nokia share shrinks

Despite a practically saturated west European market, mobile phone sales are still booming, driven by mature markets clamouring to update their phones and young markets wanting to get on the phone-owning ladder.

According to Gartner's quarterly review of phone sales, global mobile sales for the second quarter of this year rose by 35 per cent compared to Q2 2003, with 156.4 million handsets sold.

In Europe, the analyst house says the natural replacement cycle for people who got their first phones in 2000 or 2001 means it's now time for them to switch to colour screen camera phones.

Farther afield, the nascent market in Latin America is driving overseas sales. Brazil and Mexico are leading the way, with Argentina beginning to see some green shoots of economic recovery, which is favouring some of the mobile players.

Nokia keeps top slot at the top of the vendor tree, selling over 46 million handsets - almost double the amount of its nearest rival. However, its quarter-on-quarter market share has fallen from nearly 36 per cent in Q2 2003 to almost 30 per cent now.

Motorola took the number two slot with a market share of 14.5 per cent and Samsung followed behind with just over 10 per cent.

That leadership board could be all change before the end of the year. Gartner analyst Ben Wood said the research firm was expecting Samsung to pose a serious challenge for second place during the rest of 2004.