Wireless optimism

NEWS Analyst house IDC on Monday issued an upbeat report about 2002 global mobile phone shipments, the latest in a recent spate of positive news for the otherwise battered industry. It had been widely believed that mobile phone shipments will decrease this year over last year's shipments as the wireless sector cut costs and otherwise tried to deal with its first ever handset sales slump in 2001. But IDC wireless analyst Kevin Burden believes manufacturers will ship 391 million phones in 2002, nearly a 2 per cent jump over the number of phones IDC measured as shipped in 2001. Burden said to expect "modest" growth in 2002 because of first-time buyers in new markets, such as India and China. He also expects mobile phone owners in established markets, to continue upgrading to the more sophisticated models now flooding the market. "Hopefully, the industry has 'troughed' and has turned itself back up," Burden said. The IDC report follows good news in the last week from wireless companies such as Nokia, whose cautious forecast didn't change the leading phone maker's belief that 400 million handsets will be sold worldwide this year. Qualcomm on Friday said it expects to ship more mobile phone chips this quarter and next, thanks to rising demand for newer phones that let consumers surf the web and swap pictures. There was even good news from the networking gear makers, the hardest-hit industry, with Lucent Technologies saying on Monday that it expects sales in its current fiscal year to stabilise. Also on Monday, Salomon Smith Barney analyst TC Robillard wrote to clients that he's still expecting global handset sales to reach 430 million in 2003, which would be slightly ahead of some other analysts' estimates. He even did something rare for a wireless analyst in 2002 and upgraded his outlook for a pair of companies: service provider AT&T Wireless and Nokia, based in part on Nokia's recent refusal to lower its annual sales forecast. But Robillard downgraded one key wireless player - chip designer Qualcomm. He doubts China and India, two markets in which Qualcomm has begun selling gear, are the clear-cut winners that San Diego-based vendor believes. Ben Charny writes for CNET News.com