July 29, 2005

According to research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics, the big appear to keep getting bigger as Nokia and Motorola accounted for half of the 188 million phones sold in the second quarter.

However, such gains came at the expense of others in the market, notably Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., LG Electronics Co. Ltd. and Siemens AG.

Nokia commanded 32.2 percent of the worldwide handset market, while Motorola counted an 18-percent market share.

Samsung came in third with 13 percent, LG had 6.4 percent, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. had 6.3 percent and Siemens had 4.5 percent. Almost 60 vendors, from Sharp Corp. to UTStarcom Inc., fought for the remaining 19.6 percent of the market.

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Dubbed "mega-vendors," Strategy Analytics found that Nokia and Motorola managed to consolidate their positions with fleshed-out phone portfolios covering both the low- and high-end markets.

The companies also enjoyed surging demand for phones across the world; indeed, Strategy Analytics raised its phone sales forecast for 2005 to 775 million units.

The firm pointed out that Nokia and Motorola largely benefited from sales of inexpensive devices in emerging markets like India and Russia. The firm said such markets would overshadow the sluggish market for 3G phones until next year, and companies focusing on the high-end market-such as Samsung-could expect to lose market share in the near term.

As for the smart-phone market, research and consulting firm Canalys found that Nokia Corp. and Symbian Ltd. remained on top. The firm said Nokia sold more than half of the world's smart phones. Palm Inc. came in second with 8.7 percent of the market and Research In Motion Ltd. was third with 7.4 percent. Canalys said the market totaled 12.2 million units.

Canalys defines the "smart mobile device" market as including handhelds, wireless handhelds and smart phones.

On the operating system side, Symbian maintained its lead with a 62.8-percent market share. Microsoft Corp. beat No. 3 vendor PalmSource Inc. with a 15.9-percent share.

Source: RCR News