Cell phone market bigger than we thought

The researchers at Deutsche Bank are throwing out old estimates of the worldwide mobile phone market because they say we’re still underestimating its size. The reason? They’re still trying to grasp how many cell phones are made and sold in China.

As a result, Deutsche Bank is increasing its 2011 forecast of the worldwide market to 1.68 billion phones, up from 1.57 billion earlier this year. The problem with counting the phones sold in China is that a sizable chunk of them are “Shanzhai” phones, or knock-off phones that are cheap to make and popular in China and in neighboring emerging markets. The manufacturers of these handsets don't have official licenses to build phones from the Chinese government and typically do not sell them through what we might think of as traditional retail channels.