SYDNEY — Build the services, and they will come.
GPS navigation, CDMA migration, and a buoyant economy were all market factors helping to drive a record number of more than nine million mobile phone handset shipments to Australia in 2007.
The recently released Informark industry figures showed that there were 9,283,002 mobile phone handset shipments during calendar 2007. This is a record level, up 6.3 percent on 2006’s shipments of 8,735,090. It should be noted that the figures are shipment figures not sales figures. Some handsets shipped to Australia are in turn shipped to other countries in the region.
Chris Althaus, CEO of the Australian Mobile Telecommunication Association, said the record shipment figures were an indicator of strong consumer uptake of new technologically-advanced handsets offering a range of exciting services and applications.
There were 579,287 handsets shipped to Australia in December 2007, capping off a verystrong September quarter, which had two months — October (1.46 million) and November (1.25 million) — that experienced well over one million shipments. These two months are the first since the tabulation of industry figures started in July 2002 to have more than a million shipments in a month.