“Mobile phone makers were expected to report slight improvements in quarterly sales volumes, as economies start to recover after an unprecedented slump in handset sales,” Tarmo Virki and Marie-France Han report for Reuters.
“Analysts expected handset sales to have grown 4.5 percent in the July-September quarter versus the April-June quarter, according to a Reuters poll of 36 analysts,” Virki and Han report. “Third-quarter sales were forecast down 9.7 percent year-on-year.”
“Sales of more advanced models, so-called smartphones, were expected to continue to rise quickly in the quarter, but falling smartphone prices are starting to hurt top vendors. HTC, the world’s No. 4 smartphone brand, reported worse than expected third-quarter results on Tuesday, underscoring intensifying competition and declining prices in the fast-growing sector,” Virki and Han report.
“BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, the world’s second-largest smartphone maker after Nokia, said on Sept. 24 its profit dropped 3.5 percent and gave an outlook that fell short of forecasts, hitting its shares,” Virki and Han report. “One of the third-quarter winners was Apple which started to sell its upgraded iPhone [3GS] in June, analysts said.”
“The world’s second and third-biggest handset makers, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, were expected to post strong unit sales but increased marketing costs were seen hurting profit margins,” Virki and Han report. “Sony Ericsson, the handset vendor with largest exposure to European markets, was seen posting a third-quarter pretax loss of 274 million euros, slightly better than the 283 million it lost in the previous quarter.”
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