In the Q2 2008, tier one handset vendors enjoyed year-over-year unit shipment growth of between 15 and 22 percent. According to ABI Research estimates, 301 million units were shipped during the period reaffirming the research company’s forecast that the mobile device market will deliver 13% growth to take 2008 annual shipments to 1.3 billion units. In [...]

According to ABI Reseach, the emergence of location-based mobile social networking services such as GyPSii, Pelago and Loopt is revolutionizing social networking and is set to generate $3.3 billion by 2013. However, at the moment it’s not the advertising that generates the revenue for the service providers. Rather it’s licensing and revenue-sharing deals that location-based [...]

According to a recent ABI Research survey, digital camera, Bluetooth, and music/radio playback are the top three features that consumers consider essential for the next mobile phone purchase. The desire for camera phones with 2 or more megapixels leads the pack with 47% of consumers listing this feature as a “must have,” followed by Bluetooth at [...]

According to a recent report from ABI Research, SMS will continue to maintain its lead as the highest revenue generator across all messaging categories, providing global service revenues of $177 billion in 2013. However, ABI notes it’s the regional differences that will determine the success of messaging expansion into the Web, advertising, and the incorporation [...]

According to ABI Research, last year cellular modem sales — including PC Cards, Express Cards, USB modems, embedded modems and 3G/Wi-Fi routers cumulatively — increased more than 300% compared to 2006. The research company forecasts that by 2013, shipments of cellular modems will exceed 200 million units. However, ABI notes, the last year growth did not [...]

The growing use of mobile broadband services will place ever-increasing demands on the existing 3G networks. In the end, 4G networks will be required because people want to use their devices wherever they are. Meanwhile, one way to reduce the stress on network capacity is through the use of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), which routes traffic [...]

In its new study "The Mobile Browser Market," ABI Research predicts that mobile browsers which can handle advanced client-side coding (JavaScript) will keep growing over the next five years, as the open-Internet browser (OIB) segment for mobile grows from 76 million in 2007 to nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013. Still, ABI argues it's important [...]

With SMS taking off in the Americas, mobile e-mail continuing strong growth in developed regions, subscriber growth driving messaging adoption in Asia-Pacific, and social networks lifting the messaging boat across nearly all regions — revenues from mobile messaging are set to hit $212 billion by 2013. According to the new study from ABI Research called "Mobile [...]

According to ABI Research's recent survey titled "Mobile Content Survey Results", today's mobile phone owners use a mix of mobile content obtained from the Web, from their personal collections, and from their mobile operators. As an example, today's mobile consumer is more likely to watch a video from YouTube on his or her phone than [...]

The total number of 4G subscribers worldwide, including both LTE and WiMAX, is expected to exceed 90 million in 2013, according to a new forecast from ABI Research. Worldwide WCDMA subscriber numbers hit 180 million in Q4 2007 and the research company expects migration to HSPA+ to begin in early 2010, while the LTE migration will [...]