Third-generation (3G) mobile phones promising access to high-speed Internet surfing, mobile videos, music and other extra features have not grabbed consumers as quickly as expected.
But equipment vendors at a major trade fair that ended last Friday expressed confidence that buyers would embrace the technology in the next few years.
New 3G services, along with the increasing popularity of broadband Internet access, were expected to help drive the adoption of 3G phones in the mass market, they said.
The 3G phones were selling but not as fast as had once been expected, said Jay Anderson, vice president for Asia sales and operations of the US firm Motorola.
"But it will happen," he said. "We are already seeing more consumers moving across to 3G in western Europe, and there is subscriber growth increase year-on-year worldwide."
Anderson said one of the advantages of 3G was that, cost-per-bit, it was more efficient than the technology it was meant to replace.
The lack of 3G networks had been a major obstacle to the uptake of 3G phones but that was now less of an issue, said Jan Signell, Southeast Asia president for Ericsson, the world's biggest supplier of mobile telecommunications systems.
He said sales of 3G phones had risen tremendously, even in markets where 3G networks had not been rolled out.
"Indonesia is a good example, where many people buy 3G phones because of the residing functionality. So later on, when 3G services are launched, there will be a completely seamless migration," Signell said.
Neither Motorola nor Ericsson would reveal how many 3G phones they have sold nor how many they aim to sell.
Officials from Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer, declined to comment at the CommunicAsia2006 trade fair in Singapore on 3G phone uptake.
But in April, Nokia's then-chief executive, Jorma Ollila, said he expected the 3G phone market to double this year over last, with shipments worldwide approaching 100 million handsets.
By comparison, in April Nokia reported overall first-quarter handset sales of 75.1 million units, up 40 percent from a year earlier.
US-based researcher In-Stat said it expected the worldwide 3G subscriber base to grow to 540 million in 2010, from 29.1 million in 2004, while global research firm Strategy Analytics reported that the world had 100 million 3G subscribers this month.
"Reaching the 100 million subscriber mark is a significant milestone for 3G," Strategy Analytics said in a statement.
Syed Al-Idid, Asian telecommunications research analyst for investment bank UBS, said the uptake of 3G phones was slow for three reasons: "3G handsets are still expensive, bulky and have short battery life."
This was gradually changing and most new phones launched over the next two years would be 3G-enabled, he said.
Last month, the global trade association for cellphone service providers, GSMA, announced it would embark on a "3G for all" program to develop affordable 3G phones for the mass market in an effort to boost their use.
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