The Cell Phone Society

3Q sales have come out as reported by The NPD Group. The prospective numbers are pretty telling. 2 Billion In sales, a 7% percent increase over last quarter, 30% over this quarter last year. Not only do everyone and their grandma now have a cell phone, but many people are buying them like candy. The situation is getting dire as more and more people become like me.

I spent 15 months employed at my local Circuit City during my last two years of High School. The first 6 months of that were working in the Wireless Department. To bad we aren’t talking about a record 2Q of 2004, because then I could claim it was all my doing. Anyway while I was selling all the latest and greatest gizmos I fell in love with my cell phones. So when I finally made the jump to Verizon I decided to buy two phones. Yes it was a complete waste of money but I would keep both on me and switch back and forth depending on what functionality I needed. My Samsung was a trooper when it came to battery life, and my Motorola was loaded to the gills with so many cool features that even an extended life battery barely kept it running for more then a day and a half (and I was often away from a charger for longer). When I left for Europe I knew I would have to cancel my Verizon service and due to the CDMA platform I would have to buy a GSM phone that could support European SIM cards. So in the roughly 3 months I was in Europe, I bought 3 GSM phones. Yes I am a very sick individual. I purchased a Nokia with horrid sound quality, a very functional Siemens phone, and the uber-sleak Black Motorola RAZR V3 (The top selling handset of Q3). The RAZR will continue to make even more money for Motorola with a CDMA version and new colors appearing in Q4.

So If you are keeping a running Tally, that’s 5 phones I’ve purchased in the past 10 months. That’s one phone every 2 months. That’s a disgustingly materialistic reality. So when this years Q3 numbers are beating last years by 30% I wonder if it is purely a reflection of increased users, or if the number of Power Users who own multiple phones they switch to for various purposes (which is about 1000 times easier with GSM) is increasing.

Could this trend open up the possibility of returning to profiting on the hardware rather then the service? The American phone market isn’t saturated enough to warrant that yet. I do see a possibility that creative hardware and price plan opportunities will present themselves, and may indeed prove the only way for small companies to battle network giants like Sprint, Verizon, Cingular, and T-Mobile.

Watch the power users, especially as Mobinet’s new research has indicated that data services are on the rise (http://www.mobiledia.com/news/39129.html).

Some other interesting tidbits from Q3 numbers show that Motorola is leading the GSM market, and the LG is still riding its popularity (which was all but secured with the VX6000 back when I was selling them) in the CDMA market. Motorola also commands almost double market share as the 3 second place finishers; Nokia, LG, and Samsung.