Cellphone market seen returning to growth in Q4

By Reuters

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The global cellphone market is set to grow in the holiday sales-fueled October-to-December quarter, after four quarters of falls, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Friday.

"We forecast handset shipments to grow 3 percent annually in Q4 2009, signaling an end to the recession," analyst Neil Mawston said in a statement.

The mobile phone industry is ending its worst year ever, with top handset vendor Nokia <NOK1V.HE> forecasting earlier this month that 2009 market volumes would fall 7 percent from 2008.

Strategy Analytics estimated 291 million phones were sold in the third quarter, down 4 percent from a year ago.

Separately, research firm IDC estimated the market dropped 6 percent year-on-year to 287 million phones in the third quarter.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Valerie Lee)

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