macnn/electronista

04/01/2008, 12:30pm, EDT

Tuesday, April 1st

Summit: iPhone driving smartphone sales

The release of Apple's iPhone has helped to buoy the smartphone market in general, analysts pointed out at yesterday's Smartphone Summit in Las Vegas. Mark Donovan of M:Metrics observed that the number of American with smartphones doubled last year, reaching 14.6 million. This is notable not just because of previously lackluster sales, according to Donovan, but because it represents a faster growth rate than that for cellphones overall. As a gauge of the iPhone's influence, it is remarked that although 188 million Symbian phones have been sold since the OS' birth in 1999, Apple managed to sell 3.7 million iPhones in the space of six months during 2007.

Demand for iPhones also extends well beyond their official sales regions. Jonathan Goldberg of Deutsche Bank commented that when visiting Asia recently, he noticed some units being sold at a 40 percent premium, in spite of the absence of advertising and an inherently higher cost for running iPhones on unofficial networks.

Criticism of Apple at the Summit was limited mainly to Apple's European sales, which are said to be below what the company was anticipating. This is attributed to two factors: the high cost of the iPhone, when many Europeans can get cellphones for free with their service, and the absence of 3G broadband, which is de facto in many European countries. Apple is planning to release a 3G iPhone sometime this year, possibly as soon as June.


Filed under: iPhone, industry, gadgets
Other story tags: cellphones, 3G, Symbian, Europe

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*gasp*
0
04/01, 12:49pm, EDT
What? People are waiting for a feature that's necessary where they live before buying an expensive piece of hardware? Never saw common sense like that coming... Why, that's anti-EU!

(no offense)
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ironic
0
04/01, 2:54pm, EDT
that the iphone is driving smartphone sales when many legislatures are trying to ban people from driving and using a phone. Perhaps they should be looking to ban phones from driving.
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@testudo
0
04/02, 3:13pm, EDT
Only in a PC centered world. LOL :-)

You can ban what you do in a car, but you cannot ban cars or phones. The world would actually stop spinning. LOL. OK, well not really, but it would "seem" like it would.

PS. why do you hate Apple and Apple products so? Are you paid to? Just curious.

en
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