Cordless Sales Clipped In Q1 At Retail

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.— Retail-level dollar sales of cordless phones fell at an accelerating rate in the first quarter, dropping 16.5 percent to $153.3 million compared to a 6.9 percent drop during the year-ago period, NPDTechworld said.

NPD tracks sales through 13,000 retail outlets, excluding Wal Mart.

Unit sales were also down in the first quarter with sales of 3.12 million, down 16.9 percent from the year ago's 3.76 million.

The numbers do show the continued emergence of 2.4GHz analog models at the expense of both the unit and dollar share of 900MHz analog, which continues to dominate the cordless category despite losing ground.

Through March, 900MHz analog phones represented the lion's share (56.7 percent) of total cordless unit sales with 1.8 million units sold, but sales were down 35.3 percent from the same time last year. In second place, 2.4GHz analog phones took 16.5 percent of the unit share with 518,773 units sold through March of this year, up 504 percent.

In contrast, during the first quarter of 2001, 900MHz analog held a whopping 73.9 percent of the market with 2.78 million units sold, while 2.4GHz analog held just 2.2 percent unit share.

In dollars during the first quarter of 2002, 900MHz analog continued to hold the crown with 39 percent share, while 2.4GHz analog phones grabbed 17.3 percent of the dollar share. But growth year over year belonged to 2.4GHz analog, whose dollar sales grew 462 percent during the first quarter of 2002 while 900MHz analog sales fell 43.5 percent in dollars.

The 2.4GHz digital spread spectrum (DSS) phones offer a silver lining to the dark cloud of price erosion. Unit sales of 2.4GHz DSS phones grew 45.2 percent in the first quarter of 2002 to 494,563 units. While that represents only 15.8 percent of the total cordless units sales during that time, 2.4GHz DSS grabbed 31.8 percent of dollar share, second only to 900MHz analog.