Cell phone makers expect healthy sales in 2003
Cell phone makers expect healthy sales in 2003
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The expected slowdown in domestic consumption due to economic
uncertainties both at home and overseas will have little impact
on the sales of cellular phones this year, industry executives
said on Thursday.
"I acknowledge that the purchasing power (of consumers) has
been sliding a bit, but it only has little effect to our sales
projection," said Lee Khang Hyun, managing director of PT Samsung
Electronics Indonesia, the second largest cellular phone maker in
this country after Nokia.
Samsung had initially projected this year's sales to reach 3.5
million units, higher than 3 million for last year.
"But because there is a slight slowdown, we have revised
downward our projection by 5 percent," Lee said.
He added that the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) in the region would not affect the sales of
handsets here because Indonesia so far had been relatively free
from the outbreak.
But as the SARS outbreak is affecting key economies in the
Asian region, and at the same time the U.S. and Japan economies
remain in the doldrums, the Indonesian economy would also be
affected with exports and investments, are likely to remain mild.
This gloomy outlook had affected business and consumer confidence
here. Bank Indonesia said recently that domestic consumption,
which has been the main driver of economic growth in the past
couple of years, had started to slowdown in the first quarter of
this year as slowing exports and investments are starting to
affect income.
PT Dian Graha Elektrika, a company which markets Siemens phone
products in Indonesia, is also of the opinion that sales this
year would remain healthy.
Company product manager Indra Gunawan said that the above
uncertainties would only have little effect on sales this year.
He said that the Indonesian market still offer great
opportunities to sell cellular phones because of its relatively
low penetration ratio or about 5 percent.
A market is saturated when the penetration has reached 60-70
percent of the population like in Europe.