The global mobile industry grew 13.6% in the first quarter of 2008 due to rise in demand from emerging mobile markets and declining prices of mobile handsets.

According to the research company Gartner’s data released in May, the global cell phones sales rose by 13.6 % in Q1 of 2008 compared to Q1 in 2007, as reported by InformationWeek.

Gartner showed that the global mobile phone sales touched 294.3 Million in the first three months of 2008. The mobile handset sales in Asia-Pacific rose 26.6% to 114.4 Million Units against 90.4 Million in the opening three months of 2007, with majority of the demand originating from India. Moreover, mobile phone sales in Latin America jumped 28.4% to 32.5 Million Units in the first quarter of 2008 compared to 24.6 Million in the first three months of 2007.

The main reason for growth in the global mobile market is the huge untapped demand from emerging mobile markets such as China, India and Latin America, which boosted the global mobile phone market in the first three months of 2008. Also, the mobile handset sales in emerging markets of the world are being pushed by new mobile subscribers. These emerging mobile markets are also getting support from a fast growing population having high disposable income and focusing on lifestyle. As a result, people are swiftly adopting new innovations in the telecom sector, bringing a rise in demand in the global mobile handset markets.

Mobile users are regularly replacing their mobile phones to get the latest and more sophisticated technologies and to take advantages of such features as net surfing, music application and games, which also help in promoting the global mobile handsets market. Moreover, reduced costs of mobile phones because of competition makes mobile phones accessible to the middle class population, which in turn, are giving benefits to global mobile handset market. Apart from this, a number of other global factors such as encouraging trade policies have also promoted the global telecom sector growth.

As per a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “The global mobile market has succeeded in getting responses from the present-day mobile users, who are ready to pay an affordable sum of money to get advanced handset with unique features. The increasing consumer spending and requirements in the emerging world mobile market would take mobile industry to another level in near future.”

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