Cell Phone Sales Spike Again

The RED HERRING reports that "mobile phone sales grew again in the second quarter after an unusually strong first quarter and may come close to hitting the billion-unit sales mark for the year." According to IDC, "sales in the second quarter fell just short of an all-time high of 237.8 million units. That represented a 2.1 percent increase over the first quarter, and 22.5 percent more than the same quarter a year ago."

IDC estimated that "phone makers shipped 470.7 million units in the first half of the year, putting them within range of reaching the billion-unit target for the year."

IDC analyst Ryan Reith. said, "Basically at the end of the last quarter of 2005, we saw a very impressive quarter of just under 250 million units. Q1 2006 was higher than anyone expected across financial firms and research firms. People came in and revised their forecasts. We revised ours a few months back."

Reith continued, “In almost all aspects Motorola (MOT) has had an excellent first half of 2006,. I understand their ASPs [average selling prices] went down, but that was not as big an issue for them. The majority of their sales are driven by the RAZR, and you can get it for next to nothing if you want to get locked into a contract. Nokia (NOK) wasn’t much of a shock.”