In a statement issued on Friday Nokia updated it outlook (view of the mobile market) for Q4 2008 and 2009. Nokia expects Q4 sales of all mobile phones to be lower than initially expected at around 330 million. It expects its own market share to be the same or slightly up. For 2009 Nokia is expecting volumes to be down compared to 2008 (i.e. less mobile phones will be sold in 2009 than in 2008). Both these changes are attributed to 'continuing overal economic slow down'.
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If mobile phone sales in general are predicted to go down due to the recession, it should also be interesting to see how different product lines suffer in relation to each other.
As well as fewer people buying phones, one could expect the phones that are bought to be cheaper than usual. People thinking about buying a high end phone might get a mid-range one, and people considering a mid-range might go for a budget model etc.
And of course a lot of people would simply keep the phone they've got instead of upgrading, which would partially account for the drop in sales.
To use a Symbian example, will we see E63 sales replacing E71 sales, as the E63 is effectively a budget alternative to the E71?
And could smartphones as a whole move into the budget market more quickly because of the recession? If the E63 is launching for 199 euros sim-free (plus taxes), smartphones are already very very close to budget territory anyway, and the computing hardware itself can't be that expensive to manufacture.
And what about the adoption rate of mobile internet? Will people see it as a necessity to have mobile internet when money is tight, or is it seen as something frivolous?
Given that lots of phones are sold with a contract, the fate of the smartphone depends more on the accompanying contract than the device itself.