Chapter 2: Emerging Markets Pushing Cellphone Growth
[ http://www.physorg.com/news5335.html ]

"Mobile phones could go on to be the most common consumer electronics devices on the planet."
- Ben Wood

The article chosen talks about the growing popularity of cellular phones. They acknowledge that cell phones are quite possibly the best market that's been out there for ages, seeing as how phone sales rates are expected to increase by 16 percent to 779 million units in one year (2005). The source focuses on pinpointing which countries are selling the most mobile phones by comparing them. Because of population size, it's interesting that the site says that India is currently overcoming China as the largest market for cellphones. The fact that China was the biggest market over other countries such as America or Canada was surprising, but again may be the population factor. The article also talks about Latin America sales. The company did amazing research and found out that the percentage of people using cellphones increased from 0.3 percent in 1991 to approximately 20 percent as of 2005, which is a big jump in just a little over ten years. Obviously this is a market that had lots of potential and is still rising.

Demand and supply are simple when you think about them. If there is a demand, there will be people who will supply. Most companies around the world are constantly trying to guess which products will become the next "fad" and hitch a ride on the supply side. However, there are often many hit-and-misses. When the innovational idea of small cellular phones flooded the market, demand was a little slow to begin with. With technology, there are tons of people who are always interested in trying the latest gadget; however there are only a limited amount of those types of people. A larger, more cautious group exists: the buyer who waits for good reviews about a certain item before purchasing. When cellphones began to get more common, more and more people realized the usefulness of the little gadget and demand began to rise sharply after that. Marketers quickly noticed the increase in demand and the big boom of mobile phone popularity exploded. Cellphones didn't just demand themselves however. The entire world had an inclining interest in technology, period. Currently, there is a huge market for unique cellphone designs, due to consumer taste and preferences. In recent years, there have been significant changes to the cellphone as well, such as phone cases and coverings, downloadable ringtones and games, etc., which are all complimentary products. Cellphone popularity, usefulness, and demands have staggered so high that many people consider their cellphone a must have at all times. Imagine, a product so ingenious that people revolve a large part of their lives around it, using it as an organiser, phone, address book, mp3 player, and so on.