Domestic shipments of mobile phones, including car phones, surged 58.4 percent in March from a year earlier to 4.96 million, logging their fifth straight monthly increase, an industry association said Monday.
The latest monthly figure brought the total for fiscal 2002 through March 31 to 44.22 million units, down 2.6 percent from the year before, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association said.
The decline resulted from a 55.7 percent fall to 1.15 million units in shipments of personal handy-phone system equipment, the association said.
For March alone, 212,000 units of PHS equipment were shipped, up 36.97 percent from the year-earlier level.
Shipments of other types of handsets rose 59.6 percent to 4.74 million in March for the sixth straight month of increase, and edged up 0.6 percent to 43.07 million units for the whole of fiscal 2002.
JEITA traced the increase on an annual basis, which came amid a continued slump in consumer spending, to brisk replacement demand for handsets equipped with cameras and new-generation handsets offering a variety of functions and higher overall quality.