With Apple expected to announce a cellphone as early as tomorrow, the cut-throat war for market share in the mobile phone market moves further towards a style battle.
Mobile phone announcements at CES in Las Vegas, of which there are many, could be overshadowed by the expected announcement at MacWorld in San Francisco tomorrow of a cellphone from Apple.
Whatever functions it has, and MP3 is bound to be one, the Apple cellphone is expected to be stylish, and the cellphone business is a style game.
The Motorola RAZR proved that, hitting the market in November 2004, selling 50m units in two years, becoming the fastest-ever selling phone, and driving Motorola’s market share up from 16.3 per cent in Q4 04 to 20.3 per cent in Q4 06.
However there are storm clouds over the cellphone market. Nokia expects growth in the US and Europe to be under 10 per cent per year from now on.
Which is why Samsung is focusing on low-end phones for fast-growing markets like India and China. Motorola is doing the same with a big push in India last year to double its market share to 7 per cent, though Nokia, as elsewhere, is No.1 in India.
Nokia reckons there will be 3bn mobile subscribers by the end of 2007. With 6.5bn people in the world of which 1bn are under 10 years old, and 2bn live on under $2 a day, the cellphone market looks saturated.
But style could keep wealthy Westerners buying cellphones. And style is what Apple is expected to bring to the cellphone market tomorrow.
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