Opportunity Knocks at Nokia

Growth in mobile-phone sales is starting to cool off as the industry approaches the billion-sold mark.

Worldwide phone sales hit 990 million last year, a 21% increase over the total sold in 2005, according to a tally by Gartner Dataquest.

Looking ahead this year, Gartner predicts 1.2 billion cell phones sold, or another 21% growth year.

While that's still a robust clip, the industry's growth rate has slipped from 29% back in 2004. The flattening trend shows that though mobile phones are more popular than ever, building on a billion-handset base is difficult, say observers. ...