Sales of Dual-Mode Phones Hits $7.6B in Q208;
FMC Equipment Market Up 82% in 2008

The sale of dual-mode phones hit $7.6 billion in 2Q08 and are expected to be up 16% for the year, indicating healthy growth for both enterprise and consumer market segments, according to a report issued this week by Infonetics Research.

The report, entitled FMC Equipment, Phones, and Subscribers, also stated the fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) network market, which includes UMA network controllers (UNCs), grew 5-fold from 2006 to 2007; is forecast to grow another 7-fold between 2007 and 2011 worldwide; with 82% growth in 2008 alone. By the end of 2008, there will be 9.7 million seamless FMC subscribers.

Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and co-author of the report, commented: “UMA continues to dominate the worldwide seamless FMC market, a 2-horse race with unabated deployments at T-Mobile USA and Orange in Europe, which as anticipated, is launching 3G UMA. In addition, Rogers Wireless has now joined the UMA bandwagon in North America. We expect all the phone and equipment segments in the niche FMC market to grow rapidly; with the economic downturn actually making T-Mobile USA’s offering more attractive to stretched consumers.”

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