With the economy slumping, cell phone sales are starting to stay stagnant, and critics are questioning whether there is room for the cell phone industry to grow.
According to the NPD group, a technology based survey group, cell phone sales are down about 20 percent during the last year.
AT&T and Verizon are currently the leading mobile phone companies. Sue Sperry, spokesperson for Louisiana AT&T, said this is because they both offer smart phones.
“People love the blackberry and the iPhone because they’re like having a mini computer,” Sperry said.The NPD group reported 17 percent of cell phone sales were smart phones, a 10 percent rise in one year.
One shift Sperry said she notices is people are changing their plans to have unlimited texting and less minutes. At AT&T the price to add unlimited texting to your plan is $30.Bob Varrettoni, finance spokesman for Verizon, said people are crazy about smart phones.”In the first month the new Blackberry Storm was on the market we sold over 500,000,” Varrettoni said.Overall Varrettoni said he has not seen a truly damaging drop in sales.
Not all companies are so lucky though. Motorola plans to cut 4,000 employees to offset their bad sales in 2008. Sprint has also discussed laying off employees but they have not yet released how many employees.The NPD group thinks the economy may not be the only reason why sales are down. They believe since more than half the people in the world own cell phones, companies are finding it harder to find new customers and are therefore selling less phones.
Sperry agrees the lack of customers is probably more of a problem than people not buying cell phones.
“Cell phones are something that people are not giving up,” Sperry said.
Sperry said rather than laying off employees to offset any fall in sales, they offer constant promotions on phones. She said people will upgrade their phones if they can get a phone with more features at a good price.
“People, especially students and young people, are attracted to gadgets,” Sperry said.
— Contact Nichole Oden at [email protected]