Costin Soare, Retail Manager of Avenir Telecom, a major player on the GSM retail market, said that phone sales amounted to four million units in 2008. On the other hand, Razvan Petrescu, Country Manager of Nokia, estimates that 5.5 million units were sold in 2008.
“The first months of this year registered drops on certain business components, such as phones without subscriptions. A slowdown has been visible on this segment since last November. This is the first segment which is affected, because there increasingly less cash available on the market, and users prefer to buy subsidized phones or through loyalty programs,” Soare added.
“Sales will no longer focus strictly on the mobile phone as a hardware component, but on a communication service package built around the mobile phone. Our vision is closely related to mobile internet,” said Petrescu.
Players on the GSM retail market said that sales plunged 30-40 percent at market level in terms of value in the first three months of this year, compared to the first quarter of 2008. The GfK Romania analysis company estimated, in a recent study, the value of the local mobile phone market at €362 mln in 2008, down 4.5 percent year-on-year.
