Global mobile shipments are set to hit one billion this year for the first time.
According to researchers IDC, a total of 254.9 million units were shipped in the third quarter of 2006, up 7.9 per cent from the previous quarter and a hefty leap of 21 per cent from the same quarter in 2005.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker saw record performances from all top five top industry vendors during the first three quarters of 2006.
“Shipping nearly a billion units in a single year is a significant milestone, but just as important is the journey it takes to get there,” mused Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker.
“Emerging markets have presented tremendous opportunity for vendors to provide users with their first handsets, and some users may already be looking to upgrade to another phone. Similarly, replacement handsets are a popular option for those in mature markets, especially as new features such as music have gained momentum,” he added.
Ryan Reith, research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker noted that, “the strong growth in the third quarter was very comparable to the growth we saw in 3Q05, as the trend of vendors and carriers working to prep for the holiday season begins.”
“Handsets that provide music functionality are now very visible in the industry. Mature markets are at a point where it is worthwhile for the carriers to launch these devices with strong marketing campaigns behind them, knowing that consumers are willing and ready to use their device as a music player as well as a phone,” Reith added.
The big boys break records
Nokia turned in another superlative performance, exceeding expectations and setting a new industry record by shipping 88.5 million units in the third quarter, cruising past its previous record by 4.8 million units, with the telecoms giant reporting double digit growth in the Far East, Europe, US and Chinese markets.
Records were also broken at second-placed Motorola, who enjoyed their sixth straight quarter notching up growth of around 40 per cent or better, helped on by the success of their RAZR phone.
Samsung managed to shift thirty million units in a quarter for the first time, while the number four vendor, Sony Ericsson notched up a healthy twenty million units.
With ne’er a parp on their usual raucous PR trumpet, Samsung have quietly shuffled out two updates to its Q1 ultra mobile Origami PC range. 
Weighing 1.7 pounds, it’s light enough to carry around for a few hours which is a good thing because that’s when the battery will conk out (battery life is measured at a rather disappointing three hours.) 
The other new model – the Q1b – uses a cheaper Via Technologies’ C7 1GHz processor, and is fitted with a 40 GB hard disk and 512 MB RAM. 
As the smartphone market continues to explode, Microsoft has revealed its bullish ambitions to keep on doubling sales, year on year.
According to research firm 
It looks like the smartphone market is going to heat up in coming months too, with Research In Motion’s new 
Currently causing something of a stir on the floor of the Korea Electronics Show is the WiFiFone EW-700, a Wi-Fi-enabled VoIP smartphone running Windows Mobile. 
The EW-700, looks a fairly plain, clunky beast too – in fact the photos we’ve seen have something of a pre-production air to them – but it’s not short of features. 
We’re yet to get full specs either, but the screen looks like a 320 x 240 pixels jobbie to us, and there’s also a 2-megapixel camera with camcorder function onboard, a voice recorder, hardware MPEG engine offering full frame video and Wi-Fi and infrared connectivity. 
Over the last ten years, Motorola has moved from the first commercial digital STB to shipping fifty million digital STBs. 
Pure Digital Technologies has announced a cheapo camcorder that can upload movies to video sharing Web sites like Google Video with a single click. 
Allen Weiner, an analyst with market tracker Gartner, reckoned Pure Digital were on to a winner, describing the pint-size camcorder as “simple, but also revolutionary.” 
Mobile phone giant Vodafone has unwrapped its winter collection of phones which it hopes will work their way into Santa’s sack. 
The full range adds up to no less than 24 Vodafone Live with 3G handsets featuring onboard mobile TV; 14 Vodafone Live with 3G handsets featuring Vodafone Radio DJ music service and six 3G broadband handsets – sourced from Motorola and Samsung – delivering HSDPA. 
By comparison, existing 3G networks can only muster up a comparably sloth-like rate of just 384 kilobits per second. 
It wasn’t quite ‘citizen journalism,’ but a Fox News cameraman first on the scene of last week’s small plane crash into a New York Upper East Side apartment building managed to stream live footage to his TV network using a standard Windows Treo smartphone. 
Not surprisingly, the live picture quality won’t be kick-starting a bumper blow-out of Fox’s broadcast cameras on eBay quite yet, but it’s a great example of how mobile technology is making newsgathering faster and open to more people. 
Palm has introduced a new range of quad-band Palm Treo 680 smartphones, running the tried and trusted Palm OS.
The Treo comes with a large and bright 320×320 screen and the well regarded full QWERTY keyboard, with a raft of multimedia functions including an integrated digital camera, Bluetooth 1.2 , MP3 player, video recorder and player. 
Along with the usual bundled applications for e-mail, Web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar and contacts, there’s a special version of Google Map for the Treo. 
Palm has also announced that it will be partnering with several media companies, including Yahoo, Google and blogging firm Six Apart, to make their products available on the new device – these will join the enormous back catalogue of commercial and free software that’s already available for the OS.