Wireless Dealers Have Something New To Talk About
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 1/8/2002
LAS VEGAS — Wireless dealers looking for something at CES to stimulate replacement sales will find the industry's first PocketPC-based CDMA 1x smartphone, a growing selection of CDMA 1x phones, and a GPRS-based phone/entertainment device.
Dealers are also expected to get an earful of updates from carrier exhibitors Sprint PCS and Verizon about their planned CDMA 1x services (see page 113). Their rollouts could help stimulate replacement-phone sales that, by all accounts, slipped as a percentage of total handset sales in 2001.
Retail squeeze: That would be good news for retailers, given that the replacement-sales retrogression, combined with a drop in the number of net-new subscribers through the first three quarters of the year, significantly slowed the growth of handset sellthrough in 2001, analysts said.
Sellthrough growth might have fallen to 5-10 percent in 2001, said analyst Herschel Shosteck. The Strategis Group estimates U.S. sellthrough rising 6.2 percent to 75 million in 2001 and accelerating to 15.5 percent in 2002 to 86.5 million units.
Strategy Analytics put 2001 growth at a more robust 14 percent to more than 76 million, although that would be down from an estimated 36 percent gain in 2000.
The economic slowdown was the main contributor to sluggish growth, said Strategy Analytics analyst Chris Ambrosio. It caused consumers to hold onto their handsets longer, increasing the handset replacement cycle to more than 30 months in 2001 from the high-20s in the previous year, he said.
The maturation of the industry's analog-to-digital transition also hurt, said Shosteck.
For 2002, Strategy Analytics forecasts 21 percent unit-sales growth to 92 million, driven by an expected economic turnaround and growing replacement market that will account for 52 percent of total sales, up from 2001's 48 percent.
New handsets that could stimulate growth include:
Audiovox: The company plans Q1 shipments to carriers of the industry's first PocketPC-based wireless smart phone. The CDMA 1x Thera, a Greek word for "opening," is shaped like a traditional PDA and uses the new PocketPC 2002 OS. It's equipped with color touchscreen, stylus, 32MB SDRAM, 32MB of flash memory, SD card slot, voice recorder, Pocket Word, Pocket Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Audio player. Voice calls can be placed through its speakerphone or through a hands-free headset.
The 5x3x0.75-inch device operates on 800/1900MHz CDMA networks but not analog networks.
Also new is the gpsOne-equipped CDMA 1x trimode, the 9155GPX, due in March to carriers.
Another new 1x phone, the CDM-9200X trimode, is the company's first clamshell-style 1x phone. It features browser, two-way SMS, voice-activated dialing, and dual LCDs.
Danger: The startup plans to demonstrate a wireless back-end service intended for use with its Hiptop consumer device, a GPRS-based handheld that looks like a QWERTY-keyboard-equipped two-way pager. It's expected to be available in the first half through an unnamed GPRS carrier at an estimated street price of $200.
Calls can be placed through a hands-free headset or through the speakerphone. It features HTML browser, instant messaging, e-mail, PIM functions, add-on digital camera module, and unspecified entertainment features. A CDMA 1x version is planned.
Kyocera: The company was the first to make CDMA 1x phones — the 2255 and 2235 — available to consumers last year through Sprint PCS and Leap Wireless, respectively.
At CES, it will unveil a full-size QWERTY keyboard that can be attached to its Palm-based 6035 smart phone. The keyboard folds up to the size of a deck of cards.
Standard Telecom: The company will show Nixxo-branded CDMA 2G phones and its first two-way ReFlex-based pager. Also new: a trio of PC Card-size CDMA 1x radiomodems targeted to ship between March and May.
The clamshell CDMA triband NXC 3300 features dual LCD, WAP browser, two-way SMS, and predictive text input. The 800MHz CDMA NXC 3600 is a slightly smaller clamshell with no browser.
The ReFlex pager is a 3x2.6x0.9-inch clamshell NXP 780, which would be among the first to use the 2.7 version of the ReFlex protocol to boost dataspeed and network capacity. It features 7-line LCD screen and QWERTY keyboard.
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