Recession officially over as mobile market grows 10 per cent

The recession is officially over, at least according to Brown anyway, and the mobile phone market seems to confirm this with an impressive return to form during the last quarter of 2009.

According to Strategy Analytics, mobile handset shipments increased from 294 million in Q4 2008 to 324 million Q4 of 2009 - the first quarter of positive growth since 2008.

“Global mobile handset shipments reached 324 million units during Q4 2009, rising 10 percent from 294 million in Q4 2008. The ten-percent increase was the handset market’s first quarter of positive growth since Q3 2008, signaling an end to the industry’s recession which first began during Q4 2008 and lasted for four quarters,” said Bonny Joy, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.
 
Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “We expect the global handset market to continue its recovery, with shipments growing a forecast 8 percent annually during the first quarter of 2010."

He added: "Consumers, operators and handset vendors are steadily regaining confidence. However, some major regions, such as South America, are still a little fragile, so it will not always be a smooth recovery and some regions will fare better than others.”
 
The analysts’ research also revealed the following interesting stats:

- Samsung shipped a record 69 million handsets worldwide - up 31 per cent from 2008

- Motorola and Sony Ericsson were the worst affected by the recession period - both dropping dropping several points in the global market share.

- Apple shipped a record 8.7 million iPhones worldwide in Q4 of 2009 earning it a healthy 2.7 per cent market share.