Mobile phone sales figures reach record high - Finns continue to favour basic handsets

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All records were broken in mobile telephone sales in Finland last year. According to the Association of Electronics Wholesalers, retailers were supplied with almost 1.6 million handsets during the year, which marks a 12% rise from the year before.
      Price-wise, last year was also unprecedented: the tax-free wholesale price per unit averaged EUR 145, which indicates an 11% reduction from the previous year.
      The average price of a mobile handset has come down year by year. Ten years ago a handset cost four times as much as today.
     
Although Finns have gradually started buying mobiles that come equipped with additional features - last year every other handset sold in Finland had a built-in digital camera, for example - according to the statistics Finns still tend to favour the simple basic models, at least by comparison with the buying habits of other European consumers.
      According to GfK Marketing Services, Finland is not a particularly "advanced" mobile phone country. For example in Sweden a significantly larger percentage of consumers have acquired handsets with a colour display or a built-in camera.
      Samsung Finland boss Esa Aarnio is somewhat sceptical with regard to figures presented by GfK. "Half of the phones we sell are camera phones. In the light of these statistics, it seems all that the Finns buy is the old 2110 model." The Nokia 2110 was a stalwart of the 1990s.
      Partly the GfK result may be explained by the fact that the large Nokia Communicator models, which are fairly popular in Finland, were not included in the comparison.
     
"In Finland we still sell large numbers of basic phones, but the shift towards more advanced models is clearly taking place", estimates sales manager Sami Elopuro of mobile phone wholesaler Anglo-Nordic.
      In Christmas sales, Anglo-Nordic's most popular model was the Nokia 3220, which has a first-rate camera and a quality display. Other favoured Nokia models were the basic 1100 and the sporty 5140.
      "Certain companies still purchase the 1100 model for their workers", Elopuro explains. "Many customers still primarily use their handset just to make ordinary phone calls."
      At the same time, a few companies have started purchasing the third-generation 6630 model for their employees. According to Pekka Turunen from Sonera Wholesale, the selling of the more expensive models has been surprisingly brisk.
      In Central Europe, expensive EUR 500-600 models are sold more frequently than in Finland. These sales figures are prompted by the tie-in sale of a handset and operator services, something that the Finnish legislation still does not permit.


Links:
  The Association of Electronics Wholesalers
  GfK
  Anglo-Nordic

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