Mobiles to swamp Europe by next year

By next year there will be more mobile phones than people in Europe, analysts are predicting.

According to Research and Markets, handset vendors could soon find themselves operating in a saturated market across the whole of Europe.

The 100 per cent barrier will be reached in most countries by the end of this year, the analysts said, and throughout the continent by 2006 or early 2007. Most phone users in Europe remain on GSM, with just three per cent using 3G networks. Western Europe is slightly more 3G friendly, with 12 per cent of phones using third generation networks, according figures from IDC.

However, currently, mobile phone shipments in western Europe are continuing to grow, with ever more feature-rich multimedia and smart phones helping to keep handset makers buoyant despite the looming saturation.

Research from analyst house IDC found 39.5 million handsets were shipped in the third quarter of this year, up from 34 million in the corresponding quarter of last year.

Of those handsets seven per cent are now smart phones, IDC said, which is a 105 per cent year-on-year increase.

The analyst puts the growth down to BlackBerrys and HP's Mobile Messengers flying off the shelves, as well as Nokia's efforts in getting the Series 60 platform into operator's portfolios.

Of the handset market as whole, Samsung is enjoying the most growth, increasing its shipments by 100 per cent to reach 6.2 million handsets and upping its market share to 16 per cent. However, Nokia is still comprehensively beating its nearest rival Samsung with 36 per cent market share and 14.2 million handsets shipped.

Third place handset seller Motorola also saw healthy growth of 71 per cent – mostly driven by the super-slim Razr variants.