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Cell-phone sales have taken a hit from the current economic crisis. That’s it, I wish I could end this right here for everyone knows what reason are going to be given and all of those words would sound so repetitive. Gartner reported that the the unit sales have plunged much lower than those of last year and the countries hit hardest were Japan and Western Europe, but all wasn’t so gloomy as sales in Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and America showed some growth. What’s worse is that analysts report a further decline in sales for the year to come. The reason for decline is widely owned to that large population who oft replaced their handsets every now and then. The report highlighted:

New users still flocked to cell phones in the third quarter, but sales of replacement phones were hit hard, the company said. For example, in the Asia-Pacific region, consumers on average were waiting eight months to replace their handsets, rather than just four months as they had previously. As a result, sales were flat or down in mature markets such as Taiwan, Korea and Australia.

Rising sales to first-time cell users in emerging markets, such as India and China, helped drive unit sales up 13.8 percent to 116.7 million units in Asia-Pacific. Emerging-market gains also drove up sales in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa by 13.1 percent. Unit sales in Latin America rose 5.5 percent.