Mobile Phones

Few places have taken the mobile phone to heart in quite the same manner as Great Britain. We are one of a select band of developed countries where there are actually more active mobile phones than there are people. Other places with 100%+ mobile penetration include the Scandinavian countries and Japan. This situation makes the market for mobile phones in the UK a very competitive one, where the major mobile service providers and shops are fighting for a small and saturated customer base.

Many stores offer great deals on mobile phone handsets, as well as a number of months of free line rental as an incentive to lure customers away from their existing contracts. This benefits the stores as they receive a commission for every contract signed. It also benefits the consumer as great new special offers are constantly being introduced to catch their attention. The flipside of this, naturally, is that loyal customers have to subsidise the mobile phone offers, making it more economical to change mobile phone and provider every year than to stay loyal to one company.

A couple of handset manufacturers have dominated the market almost since its inception. The leading handsets are Nokia phones, with around a third of the international market. Experts and consumers agree that Nokia were the first manufacturer really to harness the non-business mobile phone market by placing games (such as Snake and Memory) into handsets, while introducing market-leading menu systems that still form the basis for their handsets today. That is not to say that their business phones are not impressive too, with the 'Communicator Series' changing the face of business mobile phones forever and paving the way for the PDAs which are so commonplace today.

Nokia's largest rival for many years was Swedish manufacturer Ericsson. The company now produces handsets in a joint venture with Japanese giant Sony under the name Sony Ericsson. Sony had previously attempted to make mobile phones, but without finding the same success it has constantly had with other consumer electricals, where the marque is generally seen as a sign of quality. The partnership has seen the development of some fantastic consumer-orientated phones with features borrowed from Sony's range of cameras, personal organisers and personal music players.

Popular in recent years have been the Asian brands such as Samsung mobile phones and LG mobile, which have been seen as pushing the boundaries of mobile design into the realms of fashion. Some observers suggest that their business phones are not equal to those of Nokia and Blackberry, although many also suggest that their mass market handsets are superior. As with so many things, it is entirely a matter of taste.