U.S. handset sales surge year-on-year, especially smart ones

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U.S. handset sales surge year-on-year, especially smart ones


By Phil Carson
Story posted: November 20, 2007 - 1:10 pm EDT

The third quarter saw consumer handset sales in the United States valued at $3.2 billion, a 47% jump over the year-ago quarter, according to new data from NPD Group. Those numbers are based on 32 million units sold.

Smartphones catapulted to 11% of all sales in the third quarter, up from 4% in the year-ago quarter.

Motorola Inc. retained its position as the top U.S. vendor by unit volume shipped, claiming 31% of the market. LG Electronics Co. Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. were neck-and-neck, with 17% and 16%, respectively, of the volumes shipped in the third quarter.

Nokia Corp. managed to ship 11% of all handsets in the U.S. in third quarter and Sanyo Corp. shipped 4%. All other vendors combined accounted for the remaining 21%.

Bluetooth and music playback are two features becoming rapidly commonplace among feature phones. Of all feature phones, 72% sold include Bluetooth, up 44% year-on-year. Half of all phones sold include music playback, a 100% jump over the year-ago quarter.

While carrier retail stores still dominate the handset sales channel, prepaid customers are likely to purchase their handsets from a mass-market retailer.

NPD’s data comes from 150,000 monthly, online consumer surveys, which are demographically representative of the U.S. population as a whole.