A Study on Modeling and Forecasting of Mobile Phone Sales Trends

Abstract

Among high-tech products, the mobile phone has experienced a rapid rate of innovation and a shortening of its product life cycle. The shortened product life cycle poses major challenges to those involved in the creation of forecasting methods fundamental to strategic management and planning systems. This study examined whether the best model applies to the entire diffusion life span of a mobile phone. Mobile phone sales data from a specific mobile service provider in Korea from March of 2013 to August of 2014 were analyzed to compare the performance of two S-shaped diffusion models and two non-linear regression models, the Gompertz, logistic, Michaelis-Menten, and logarithmic models. The experimental results indicated that the logistic model outperforms the other three models over the fitted region of the diffusion. For forecasting, the logistic model outperformed the Gompertz model for the period prior to diffusion saturation, whereas the Gompertz model was superior after saturation approaches. This analysis may help those estimate the potential mobile phone market size and perform inventory and order management of mobile phones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]