Click to View

While the recession is prompting layoffs and salary freezes across the tech landscape, the wireless industry is weathering the storm better than others.

But with dwindling growth rates and weakening margins, it's clear that wireless players are feeling the chill as well, according to the latest stats from research firm Strategy Analytics.

Mobile carriers, for instance, continued to see subscriber growth throughout 2008, according to a new report from the firm. Yet that growth is increasingly sluggish -- dipping from 9 percent in 2007 to 6.5 percent last year, and from an annual increase of 21.5 million subscribers to 17 million. For the coming year, Strategy Analytics projects growth of only 5.7 percent, or 16 million mobile subscribers.

While wireless carriers are moving to cope with slowing growth, many mobile phone manufacturers are seeing sales in outright decline. Strategy Analytics said fourth-quarter handset sales were off 10.5 percent compared to the same period a year ago -- dropping from to 329 million to 295 million.

The news signals new levels of weakness in an industry that had shown signs of being better prepared than other when it came to riding out the recession. Mobile users continue gobbling up new phones like the Apple iPhone and the latest BlackBerry models by Research in Motion (RIM).

But it's easy to forget that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) fans represent only a sliver of worldwide mobile phone users -- and they can't offset a larger decline.

In particular, analysts placed the blame on businesses and consumers' efforts to scale back on expenses like multiple devices.

See here for the rest of this article at internetNews.com.