Cell Phones Still Ringing Off the Hook

It's only the halfway mark, but already cell-phone sales are looking like the Lance Armstrong of tech.

Worldwide handset shipments reached 190.5 million units in during the second quarter, a 21% increase from the year-ago period, according to a Gartner tally released Thursday. The torrid sales pace in the typically slow first half of the year, combined with a usually robust Christmas season, promises a record sales number for 2005.

Analysts and industry executives predict that the handset sales growth rate this year will be somewhere in a range between 13% to 15%, with about 750 million units shipped. That compares with the record 20% growth last year, with 630 million units sold.

And as the mobile-phone momentum continues, so does the consolidation of business into fewer phone-making hands. ...