The shift is to a more fashionable, personal device versus a utility device. Phones that have MP3, ring tones, pictures and iPod type features, with e-mail capability, broadband TV news “snacks” of between 30-second and five-minute clips of news, sports and entertainment, are becoming all the rage.

	Wireless Telephones Sales to Dealers
	Unit Sales (Thousands)	Dollar Sales (Millions)	Average Unit Price
2000	52,600	8,995	171
2001	53,400	9,651	162
2002	58,740	8,106	138
2003	70,488	9,163	130
2004	79,651	10,538	132
2005p	89,210	11,329	127

 

Source: CEA Market Research, 1/05

However, there is no all-in-one-phone on the horizon, if ever, says Rajeev Chand, senior equity analyst for wireless research at Rutberg & Company Research. “Today, it’s the convergence to personal, fashionable devices. In three to five years lots of different phones will provide between two to four functions and do them very well, but not all-in-one,” he concludes.

A gaggle of companies are already in the mix. NEC and its MH210-SIP-based phone and the company’s dual-mode technologies are in their pilot stage this year. Motorola is pushing its CN 620 dual mode 802.11 GSM phone deeper into the enterprise market. And Ericsson’s Mobile Device Management is a set of tools to centralize the management of smart phones, security, anti-virus and encryption software, a clear indication of just how feature-rich handsets are expected to become and the challenges of how to manage all those features.

Nokia’s 9500 Communicator; NTT DoCoMo’s N900 iL, a dual network 3G FOMA handset; and LG Electronics’ Push-To-View mobile technology represent a mini-sampling of the current handsets and technologies.

Sprint is deploying a video ringer with a song and video clip on Sanyo’s MM-560 phone, and Samsung is out with its 2-megapixel camera phone, handsets with MP3 music players, a pocket PC phone and an EDGE phone with speech-to-text capabilities.

CBS News called them chic and expensive, but there’s no denying these new phones are creating a buzz. Motorola’s Razr, offered through Cingular, is an example. It comes with MPEG4 video playback, Bluetooth wireless technology, digital camera and keypad.

Sony Ericsson’s S710a high-end camera phone allows users to talk and view messaging without opening the phone and use media applications such as Media Player, 3D games, Music DJ and Internet access. And Nokia’s lipstick phone slides open and contains a camera with a zoom feature and radio. Voice recognition automatically dials a stored number, and it can download video clips.

	Pagers
	Factory Sales
			Unit Sales
			(Millions)
2000			750
2001			790
2002			810
2003			729
2004			675
2005p			675

 

Source: CEA Market Research, 1/05