"As for next year, it is possible that the market could post a single-digit or even negative growth," a Samsung spokesman said.

Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 2 handset maker, said on Monday the 2008 global handset market could fall short of its 9 percent growth forecast and did not exclude the possibility the market could shrink in 2009.

Research In Motion (RIMM) President Mike Lazaridis Monday said he's still confident about growth in the smartphone market. Lazaridis said despite the economic crisis everybody needs communication devices. He added the smart phone market outpaces the overall mobile phone sector.

The Finnish communications giant said it expects to ship 330 million handsets in the quarter. Consequently, Nokia's shipments forecast for the whole of 2008 dropped from 1.26 billion units to 1.24 billion.

Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth quarter results were boosted by payments from its recent deal with Nokia, but it was cautious about 2009, highlighting the pressure on the CDMA market and on handsets in general.

THine Electronics and Winbond Electronics has announced that the two companies agreed to transfer Winbond's Image Signal Processor (ISP) Business to THine. Winbond's ISP products are specially designed for high-end camera and mobile phones. Winbond will transfer assets including its intellectual property rights and ISP-related assets in fiscal year 2008, establishing a new company to transfer to THine.

Open Mobile Alliance DM extension will make it simpler to put new apps on phones

Samsung Electronics believes that it needs steady growth strategy in order to narrow the gap with Nokia that takes 40% world market share. On contrary, LGE is seen to focus on enhancing fundamentals for mobile business, rather than unreasonable quantity expansion. The mobile phone market for next year is projected to see division in demand between premium and low price amid slow down in growth trend due to overall economic slow down. Recently, UBS lowered mobile phone market growth rate prediction for next year from 6% to 3%.

Orange UK has stopped selling BlackBerry Bold handsets, after concerns were raised over potential software problems with the snazzy-looking device.