Mobile Phone Shipments Up 13.8%

People are going mad replacing and buying cell phones (which are ‘mobile phones’ for us here in Australia). Cell phone sales were up a massive 13.8 percent in the first quarter of 2010 with 295 million cell phones being purchased in those three months [from PC World]. That works out to about a 100 million a month, or 22.7 million new cell phones being purchased every week.

The follow graph from iSuppli [link] shows cell phone shipments in thousands and compares the first quarter sales of 2010 to the same period in 2009.

Nokia are still far and away the number one supplier of cell phones and, as the graph shows in the red bars, their market share increased in the first three months of 2010. However the number two, Samsung, is closing the gap. LG are also growing market share rapidly and are now in solid third place ahead of SonyEricsson 4th, Research In Motion/Blackberry 5th, and Apple sitting at 6th. Motorola, who were at one stage third, have slipped all the way back to 8th.

The view is that about 92 percent of these purchases are replacement buys. If this is correct then this means that something like 270 million cell phones have just become rubbish. I just hope they are disposed of intelligently—there are some nasty compounds in cell phones.