DvDand Solutions, LLC

Wall Street Journal, yesterday, reported that Dell is set to enter the smartphone market (subscription required).  Dell has been making prototypes based on Android and Windows Mobile platforms for more than a year.  The plans are still up in the air and Dell could decide not to enter the market after all. If it does go ahead, the announcement likely to come at the Mobile World Congress next month.

If Delll does decide to enter the market, in my opinion, it should stay for the long haul and innovate to make money.It should also look at some of the Japanese manufacturers, not just look at Apple, as the report suggests.  Being just another cell phone provider will not cut it, as Motorola and Palm can attest. Based on Dell’s track record, it will have to be head and shoulders better than in the PC business to survive.

According to DigiTimes who compiled the list of world wide shippment of mobile phones, LG has overtaken Motorola, albeit barely, by shipping 100 million mobile phones compared to 99.9 million for Motorola. 2009 promises to be a competitive year for both of these manufacturers with Motorola shipping several devices to Verizon this year and LG has promised to have 100 different devices shipped this year too.
The top 5 shippers of mobile phones for 2008 (with millions of units) were:
Nokia – 470
Samsung – 200
LG – 100
Motorola – 99.9
Sony Ericsson 96.6

This means that the top 5 manufacturers shipped nearly a billion phones in 2008.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

IDC today published a state of the mobile phone industry called the Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. According to this report, mobile phones shipments continue to see solid 115.3% growth worldwide in Q2, 2008 despite challenging economic conditions worldwide. This is thanks in large part to the smartphone features like GPS, multimedia and touchscreen. Vendors continue to experiment and provide new functionality even in emerging market. Here is a snapshot of the top 5 vendors courtesy of IDC (shipment are in millions of units).

    Vendor        Q208       Q208      Q207       Q207     2Q08/2Q07
                  Shipments  Market    Shipments   Market     Growth
                                       Share                         Share
Nokia                     122.0       39.9%      100.8      38.0%      21.0%
Samsung                  45.7       14.9%        37.4      14.1%      22.2%
Motorola                  28.1         9.2%        35.5      13.4%     -20.8%
LG Electronics         27.7         9.1%        19.1       7.2%       45.0%
Sony Ericsson         24.4         8.0%         24.9       9.4%       -2.0%
Others                      58.1      19.0%         47.7      18.0%      21.8%
Total                       306.0    100.0%       265.4     100.0%     15.3%