Date: 06/12/2010

Mobile phone accessories to generate close to $35 billion in revenue in 2011, says study

Mobile phone accessories - especially aftermarket accessories - are expected to generate almost $35 billion in revenue in 2011, rising to more than $50 billion in 2015, as per latest study by ABI Research.

"Today's smartphone probably includes Bluetooth and a camera - nothing new there - but it may also incorporate Wi-Fi, Near Field Communication, GPS, multimedia, speech recognition and more," says senior analyst Michael Morgan. "All these add value to the device, making it more worth protecting and more able to benefit from high quality, high-priced accessories."

New phones, the smart category demands better accessories of improved quality which opens a new space for 3rd-party accessory OEMs to draw on the value of the handsets.

But accessory OEMs need high volumes and, says Morgan, "The only way to achieve high volume sales is to craft a more horizontal product line, creating accessories that will fit a wide range of devices." Every device has a 3.5mm audio jack, for example, and no handset OEM is including high quality headsets. So Bose, Zagg, Monster, and others are successfully filling the gap.

There is a further twist leveraging brand value. As practice director Kevin Burden points out, "Handset OEMs thought their brand-power could sell accessories, but there wasn't actually a lot of brand affinity involved in consumers' purchases. Accessory OEMs, in contrast, extend their known expertise: Monster has built on its reputation for good cables, for instance, transferring that to its premium headphone offering."