HP and Nokia still hand-held top dogs
Vendors dominate EMEA market
Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Nokia continue to dominate the EMEA hand-held device market, despite healthy growth from the makers of smart and feature phones.
Overall, EMEA shipments of mobile devices in the first quarter of 2004 were 62 per cent up on Q1 2003, according to research from analyst Canalys.
Nokia has the overall lead, with a 48.4 per cent share of all device shipments and 73.8 per cent of voice-specific mobile devices. HP leads the data-centric market with a 29.5 per cent share.
"It's been a pretty strong quarter, all in all," said Chris Jones, senior analyst at Canalys. "The appearance of lots of new devices in the market in Q4 tends to put a bit of a dampener on the following quarter, but in this case it's been very different."
Shipments of Siemens and Research in Motion (RIM) devices in the quarter rocketed. Siemens reached a 3.4 per cent share of the total market, compared to 0.1 per cent of the voice-centric market in Q1 2003. RIM has risen from a 0.9 per cent market share to eight per cent for data-centric devices.
However, sources have said that at least one mobile operator is carrying a large inventory of unsold RIM BlackBerry devices.
Brian Jackson, managing director of distributor Now Wireless, said RIM had not necessarily enjoyed the same level of success in Europe that it had enjoyed in its home US market, where the device became an overnight hit.
"RIM is doing well for a number of reasons," Jones said. "It's now got an impressive list of operators across Europe. They've cut price points and added colour screens and voice integration. A lot of pilots introduced in the past 12 months have expanded into full adoption."