Fancy phone vs smart phone

The result of 1Q 2009 worldwide mobile phone sales just came out. The world map of smart phones has changed a lot since last year because of Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/37570.php

The mid to high end of cell phone market is traditionally defined by so called "smart phones" and "feature phones". A smart phone is (typically defined as) a cell phone being able to add applications to it. A feature phone is a cell phone with a bunch of applications pre-loaded, but an end user can not add software to it. When looking at the data and thinking of those manufacturers that used to have major shares in the smart phone market, I have to add one more category, "fancy phone" to the market mix.

What is a fancy phone? A fancy phone is a smart phone that a consumer buys one for its brand and look, or the prestige comes with the price, but not for its smart phone capabilities. The manufacturer would like to believe its smart phones are popular because of its features. A lot of market data were put together in the effort of proving the correlation between the market share and technological superiority. When true competition shows up, such a market share wanes rapidly, and people begin to realize the king does not have clothes on him.

US Monster Employment Index from 2007 to 2008

Now we have the complete US Monster Employment Index from January 2007 to December 2008.



When I started to monitor this index, I wanted to see whether it can serve as a leading economic index like other indices for wanted ads. From the chart, it looks like a concurrent index than a leading one. As those data are not seasonally adjusted, it is not yet the time to make the call.

The blip around April to June 2008 was explained by Monster that the time from April to June is usually a busy-hiring season. We will see this April whether the same seasonal phenomenon will repeat itself.

US in recession since December 2007

US National Bureau of Economic Research announced that US has been in recession since December 2007.

NBER noted that the previous peak occurred in November 2007. Comments from the press dismissed it as an obvious hindsight, though I don't recall the same pessimism during the same period of last year (blogs in 2007/11, 2008/01, and 2008/05). The beginning of a recession is not so evident as it just comes down from the peak. The level of economic activities are still as vibrant as the peak. By the same token, people would not notice the start of a recovery when the economy is not far away from the trough. The academic definition is arguably differnt from the common wisdom. The NBER identifies the turn of events, from peak to trough or from trough to peak. We, the non-researchers, recognize the top half and the bottom half of the waves.

Real GDP growth of the past four quarters

• 2007 4th quarter : -0.2%
• 2008 1st quarter : +0.9%
• 2008 2nd quarter : +2.8%
• 2008 3rd quarter : -0.5% (est.)

One interesting thing to note is that the GDP number actually increased in the first half of 2008 (in real GDP growth, numbers from US Bureau of Economic Analysis). As NBER changed its definition of recession from the old "measure of a period of negative, real GDP growth", the statistics from past recessions may not be a perfect indicator. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century there were four recessions lasted longer than 23 months, and one of the four lasted 43 months. As we have been in a recession for 12 months now, let's hope we will see the recovery soon in 2009.