The major players There are several different players in this industry. Some are just focusing on manufacturing handsets while others also develop other parts of the mobile phone system. The four major players in the handset manufacturing industry are Siemens, Nokia, Sony/Ericsson and Samsung. Siemens In 1979 Siemens entered the mobile phone market. They got the mission to develop a mobile phone for the NMT network to companies in Scandinavia. The software was developed in Sweden, the hardware in Norway and the design in Denmark.
The project was successful and in 1981 Siemens had developed the first mobile phone on this market. In the 1980 s Siemens started to cooperate with Spec tronic AB, and together they developed portable NMT phones. In 1997 they introduced their first GSM mobile phone with colour display. Nokia Nokia’s mobile phone production started in the 60 s with the radiotelephones made in the electronics department, and continued later with the joint venture company Moira. In 1991, Nokia acquired Technophone, then Europe’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer. This gave Nokia’s conquest of America a further boost, because Technophone was already well established in the American market.
By the end of the millennium, Nokia had become the world leader in mobile phones. Sony/Ericsson Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications was founded in 2001 by Ericsson and Sony Corporation, who owns one half each of the company. Sony Ericsson is responsible for product research, design and development as well as marketing, sales, distribution and customer service. Their first products were launched during the second decade in 2002. Samsung Samsung was founded in 1938. In 1996, Samsung Electronics’ Telecommunication Network Division became the first in the world to utilize commercialized CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) services.
By year 2002, Samsung Electronics had 23% market share in CDMA Mobile Phones and 10% in mobile phones, ranking third in the world’s wireless communications market share. The technology The main technologies in the mobile telephony: – Analog radio technology – Filter technology – Battery technology – Display technology – Assembly and assembly design technology – VLSI-design technology – VLSI-production – Digital radio – Digital signal processing The motives and incentives for handset manufacturers to participate in 3 G Although the 3 G market for handsets is very uncertain, many handset manufactures have started their investment in 3 G a few year ago. As a matter of fact the handsets manufacturers should be proactive in developing 3 G handsets. Otherwise in case of the success of the 3 G the current major manufacturers will lose their market shares and the newcomers will capture the market. In fact the competition for 3 G handsets is not just to avoid felling behind. In fact the internet based mobile communication is a new market since it offers a lot of new data services such as broadband access, video & audio streaming, file download, web browsing, on-line services, m-commerce, e-mail and advanced picture messaging.
Market forecast for these new services is quit under uncertainty, however a forecast by Johnson which is mostly based on the Japanese success in i-mode is presented in figure 4. Due to 3 G new services and the capability of 3 G to support 2 G service it is expected that the 2 G users shift to 3 G. To use the new 3 G services most users have to replace their handsets with the new 3 G handset and this will increase the replacement handsets shipment in the coming years. Figure 5 present the expected replacement handsets shipment in the coming years..