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Thu, 07 Aug 2008 iPhone sales to surge as smartphone market grows

Apple's iPhone seems on the cusp of a growing wave of smartphone sales

Jonny Evans

Apple may be on target to grab 28 per cent of global smartphone sales by 2009, a prediction originally offered by Piper Jaffray and now repeated by Turner Investments.

The analysts point to Apple's complete control over the iPhone's design and development, the quality of the phone's operating software, and the ample number of outside application developed for the phone as factors that could propel the company's share of the smart-phone market from 3.7 per cent in 2007 to 28.0% in 2009.

Allegedly, the iPhone 3G's low price, intuitive interface, applications and features will boost Apple's iPhone sales, forcing competitors to emulate the company with cheaper and better devices.

The analysts estimate that the "worldwide market for mobile connectivity is likely to generate accelerating double-digit growth over the next five to 10 years." And they note that emerging markets present the greatest growth potential for telecommunications, due to the massive numbers of people there who use their handsets as both their phone and their computer in the absence of desktop or laptop computers.

Separate research from Nokia indicates global smartphone sales surged 40 per cent in Q2 2008, far outperforming the 15 per cent growth for all handsets sold during the same period.

Sales of handsets worldwide reached 300 million units in the second quarter, up 5 per cent sequentially and 15 per cent year on year, while global smartphone sales in the same quarter topped 37.1 million units, up 37.4 per cent.

It's all to gain for Apple, particularly in the US, reports explain: "The ratio of smartphones to the global handset market is expected to climb to 15 per cent in the second half of this year, up from 12-13 per cent currently. In the US market alone, sales of smartphones already reached 20 per cent in the second quarter," a report explains.

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