Consumers are adopting a cautious attitude in the wake of recent series of interest rate rises, says a leading economic analyst in commenting on AMTA’s latest mobile shipment figures for February 2010.

The latest shipment figures show there were 471,494 mobiles shipped to Australia in February. This was down 9.6% on a year ago.

For the first two months of this year there were 955,033 shipments. This compared to 1,052,762 in the first two months of last year.

CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian said in a note to investors that mobile phones sales (shipments) had tracked lower for a second consecutive month in February.

“The data on mobile phones… is one of the timeliest readings of consumer spending. And given that mobile phones are still a ‘must have’ item, if sales are moving then it provides a pointer to consumers spending trends,” he said.

“Mobile phones sales certainly finished 2009 on a high, up by just over 20 per cent on a year ago. However, over January and February sales have eased by almost the same amount. While there is certainly a seasonal factor at play it does not explain the considerable slide over the past two months.”

Mr Savanth said it could mean that the nation was reaching saturation point and annual shipments could have peaked at 9 milllion a year.

He said the March rate rise had resulted in consumers paring back optimism. The weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence rating stood at 124.4 over the past weekend, down 4.1 points from the end of February.

Mr Savanth said although there had been an easing in confidence it was still 34 per cent higher than a year ago and holding at a level suggesting that consumers are fairly optimistic about the future.

AMTA Chief Executive Officer Chris Althaus said it would be premature to place too much emphasis on two month’s figures. It was important to take account of changing seasonal patterns in mobile phone shipments.

For instance, the December 2009 shipment figures were 726,939, which were up 20.7% from 602,371 in December 2008.

“Perhaps, it comes as little surprise that this January’s and February’s figures are down compared to the first two months of 2009 because December 2009 was the highest December figure on record and the first two months’ falls are from a high base. Let’s wait and see what happens in coming months before jumping to too many conclusions.”

AMTA figures can be viewed under industry statistics at www.amta.org.au