Although smartphone sales in Europe are still growing, market participants must act now to minimize the recession's impact on smartphone sales and position smartphones for post-recession growth, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.
While Pyramid expects total handset sales to decline 21 per cent in Europe in 2009, smartphone sales, driven mostly by market developments in Western Europe, will continue to grow robustly--about 22 per cent year on year, notes Stela Bokun, analyst at Pyramid. In CEE, however, Pyramid believes smartphone sales will fall 8 per cent in 2009. "Even when the region's economy is doing well, device vendors and operators typically report much lower smartphone handset sales in CEE countries," she says. "Recently this situation has worsened significantly: Many CEE countries are seeing staggering GDP declines, significant currency devaluations and skyrocketing unemployment." Article