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Friday, January 13, 2006

Phone prices to decrease

The average price of a mobile phone will lower this year by approximately 9%, according to a study issued by the market research company iSuppli, quoted by Reuters.

The mobile phones will have an average price of 126 dollars comparing with the 142 dollars reported for 2005.

The number of mobile phones that will be produced this year is expected to be 850 million units.

iSuppli estimates that the reduction of prices in this sector will decrease in 2007.

However, due to many new phones containing USB ports to allow direct connections to PCs for music downloading, music services from the wireless service providers are often bypassed.
Further, new phones incorporating Wi-Fi capability are able to link to the Internet and place Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls at little or no cost -- again bypassing voice services offered by the wireless carriers. Some mobile-phone brands even incorporate Skype Technologies S.A.’s popular VoIP software to enable this capability.
As the number of phones with these features increases, this problem will grow in magnitude, iSuppli predicts.

By 2008, USB ports are expected in 73 percent of all new-model mobile phones, up from 30 percent in 2004, while music playback capability -- including MP3 -- is expected in 54 percent of new-model wireless handsets in 2008, up from 20 percent in 2004.

Slots for removable flash-memory cards, which can be used to store and transfer music files are predicted to reach a 43 percent penetration rate of new phones by 2008, up from 16 percent in 2004.
Finally, 14 percent of new-model phones in 2008 are estimated to contain Wi-Fi links, up from less than 1 percent in 2004.

To avoid working against each other, service providers and their mobile-phone suppliers must carefully orchestrate the combination of handset features and services offered to subscribers, iSuppli believes.

Posted by Iulia Rasoiu : 1/13/2006 10:11:00 am