It’s hardly surprising news, but is still a piece of information that should be a concern for many phone manufacturers out there. Latest figures from industry research company GfK show that 3G is not as important to Europe consumers as was once hoped.
Sales figures of 3G handsets in Western Europe have fallen to 18 per cent which is far short of the predicted 35 per cent share of the market that they were supposed to command, according to chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
So it seems that on the Continent at least, people are happy with using their phone to make calls and send texts, and aren’t necessarily taken by a handset’s ability to navigate you to the nearest pizzeria.
The news comes as the total amount of handset subsidy has dropped by 10 per cent and is already noticeably lower than the last quarter of 2008.
This lowered handset subsidy particularly affects 3G handsets.
The reason for less money being injected into the 3G sector is a mixture of operators reducing their financial contributions on expensive 3G handsets, plus the uphill battle to meet capacity on their 3G networks thanks to a significant increase in mobile broadband use.
Some analysts also argue there is a general shortage of appealing 3G handsets in the market, which is a problem we identified last week with Sony Ericsson’s failing sales, as the company seems dependent on its only high-end handset, the Xperia X1.
Source: Mobile Today
This was a guest post by Nick who normally blogs about mobile phone deals at the DAP blog