LONDON- ABI Research estimates that 263.8 million mobile handsets were shipped in 2Q 2007, a year-over-year quarterly increase of 13%. “A 13% increase is hardly stellar,” says Jake Saunders, vice president at ABI Research, “but it does pay the handset vendors’ bills. The second half of the year should prove more robust, ending the year with 15% YoY growth at 1.13 billion.”

“More dramatic was Nokia’s continued consolidation of the handset market,” adds wireless research director Stuart Carlaw. “Nokia’s market share grew by 1.4% to 37.3% in the second quarter, the largest increase in market share of all the vendors. LG and Sony Ericsson also made respectable gains of 0.8% and 0.6%. Samsung’s market share increase was more muted. Since Motorola has retrenched from emerging markets, and is still in the process of revamping its handset portfolio, it should not come as too much of a surprise that Motorola’s handset market share shrank to 13.1% compared to 17.1% in 1Q 2007. It was only two quarters ago that Motorola’s market share was 22.1%.”

The vacuum created by Motorola’s loss of market share is creating opportunities for other vendors. Samsung and LG have announced their intentions to penetrate the Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian markets. Other vendors are expanding their presences outside their core markets. Research In Motion reported that 30% of its BlackBerry subscribers are now based outside North America. Similarly Sony Ericsson has been able to harness its Cybershot (camera-centric) and Walkman (media-centric) handsets to expand its presence well beyond Europe.

Nokia managed to maintain its handset average selling price (EUR 90 vs EUR 89) through the introduction of a number of mid to high end handset models. Most other vendors, however, saw heavy declines in ASP.

However, North America is definitely the company’s soft underbelly. Despite a number of initiatives by Nokia senior management to bolster its presence in the North American market, handset shipments shrank further, from 4.8 to 4.1 million in 2Q-2007. While Apple’s iPhone is not going to alter the North American competitive landscape radically in the foreseeable future, Nokia’s perceived weakness in the CDMA handset market, the iPhone, and a number of other smartphone vendors, such as RIM, are curbing Nokia’s traction in the North American market.

A detailed examination of these results will be published in ABI Research’s Mobile Devices Market Sizing & Share database, which forms part of the firm’s Mobile Devices Research Service (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/service/Mobile_Devices_Research_S ervice)(Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.).

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations supporting annual research programs, intelligence services, and market reports in broadband and multimedia, RFID and M2M, wireless connectivity, mobile wireless, transportation, and emerging technologies. For information, visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.