Although South Africa leads the way in many areas, when it comes to mobile phone trends we often follow where the global market leads. So when a brand or type of handset does well overseas we can predict a similar pattern here in South Africa within 6 months to a year.

According to research by industry-watcher Gartner Inc, 286.1 million mobile phones were sold worldwide in the second quarter of 2009. That’s 6.1% down on one year ago. There was, however, a big growth area in smartphone sales, which topped 40 million units, 27% up from the same period last year.

"Touchscreen and qwerty devices remained a major driver for replacement sales and benefited manufacturers with strong, touch-focused midtier devices” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. “However, the decline in average selling price (ASP) accelerated in the first half of the year and particularly affected manufacturers of mid- and low-end devices".

Samsung had a very strong second quarter of 2009 with sales of 55 million units thanks to its range of touchscreen devices, QWERTY phones and smartphones. Samsung is forecasted to gain further market share in the second half of 2009, rapidly closing the gap with Nokia, which remained in number 1 position thanks to sales of primarily low-end devices.

Sony Ericsson's market share dropped 2.8 percentage points year-on-year in the second quarter of 2009 but its volume dropped a massive 41%. Although the market environment was challenging, Gartner attributes Sony Ericsson's poor performance to its “uncompetitive” range of handsets.

Apple sold 5.4 million units in the second quarter of 2009 – 51% growth – ensuring it remains in third position in the smartphone market.

Sales for the remainder of 2009 in both South Africa and abroad will be driven by features that consumers are starting to demand most strongly: touchscreens, intuitive user interfaces and application/content ecosystems (incl. widgets, apps and tools). These are areas where Samsung is perfectly positioned to compete strongly. And for motivated Samsung sellers that means good things. Remember to translate techie features into human benefits, and you’ll soon be matching Samsung’s global success with some red-hot results of your own ...

Daniel Lamberti – Brand Manager: Samsung Mobile Division