Western Europe’s telecoms sector achieved 16.5 per cent growth in Q3 2012, with sales reaching €5.6bn (£4.5m), the strongest of all sectors in the GfK TEMAX review of technical consumer goods.

Telecoms has seen accumulated growth of 13.8 per cent for the year to date, amounting to sales of €16.1bn. Apart from Greece and Spain, all countries showed significant growth.

This growth, particularly in smartphone adoption, is said in the report to be due to subsidies by operators for new handsets, bigger displays and features like NFC with mass market price tags and the higher data limits offered by LTE in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and France.

GfK also expects smartphones to play a very important role during the holiday season. Low-end camera sales are declining in volume, affected by high penetration of smartphones.

Tablets and the launch of Windows 8 have contributed a growth rate of 4.9 per cent in the IT sector, with sales of €14.1bn between July and September 2012. The Swedish IT sector hit the double-digit growth barrier.

The overall technical consumer goods market saw a 1.5 per cent increase in value increase compared to the same period last year, with total sales of €45.3bn. Cumulated sales from January to September were nearly identical to 2011.