U.S. consumers buy 146 million mobile phones in ’07: Survey
February 20, 2008
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis at NPD Group
A new survey claims that U.S. consumers bought 146 million mobile phones last year, reflecting the steady migration from landlines to wireless devices.
The Mobile Phone Track consumer survey, from market researcher NPD Group Inc., said these mobile phones generated consumer sales of $11.5 billion including rebates and promotions.
“We continue to see the impact of the iPhone in the fourth quarter,” Ross Rubin, New York-based director of industry analysis at NPD. “Smartphones, in general, continue to pick up share and this is driving average prices higher.”
Smartphones accounted for 12 percent of handset sales in the fourth quarter of 2007 versus 6 percent for the year-ago period. Music-enabled devices grew share to 48 percent in the last quarter compared with 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Also, sales of devices that supported music and removable memory grew to 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 versus 22 percent in the year-ago period.
“For carriers it’s an opportunity to drive more robust 3G offerings,” Mr. Rubin said. “For marketers these products increasingly are becoming capable of rich media and mobile video as well as more faithful Web reproduction.”
Motorola held on to its lead in U.S. new phone sales last year, the survey showed. But its unit sales fell one point to 32 percent in 2007 compared with the prior year. The brand accounted for the two top-selling handsets in the fourth quarter of 2007, with phones from LG, Samsung and Apple accounting for the rest. Motorola’s clamshell Razr was most popular.
Samsung, the No. 2 in handset sales nationwide after Motorola, increased its market share to 17 percent in 2007 from 14 percent in 2006. LG’s share was flat at 16 percent and so was Sanyo’s at 4 percent. But Nokia lost ground, coming in at 10 percent for 2007 from 15 percent in the year before.
The percentage of mobile phones with Bluetooth capability increased to 72 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 versus 53 percent in the year-ago period, the NPD survey found. However, only 19 percent of consumers are actually using this feature on their phones.
“It’s questionable whether consumers are using all this advanced smartphone functionality,” Mr. Rubin said. “Some may just be drawn to the QWERTY keyboard.”