Samsung Overtakes Motorola As Second Largest Handset Maker

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=6967420&pageNumber=0' target='_blank'>http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=6967420&pageNumber=0</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Samsung Electronics overtook Motorola as the world's second-biggest mobile phone maker in the third quarter as the market continued to boom, a survey showed on Wednesday. Confirming an earlier Reuters story, research group Gartner said Samsung sold 22.98 million phones to consumers, giving it a 13.8 percent market share, compared with sales of 22.39 million cell phones by Motorola, which was 13.4 percent of the market. Motorola, whose Chief Executive Ed Zander told Reuters last month he wants his company to become the world's biggest handset maker, lost more than two points compared with the second quarter market share of 15.8 percent. Samsung advanced from 12.1 percent in the second quarter, as consumers continued to snap up its fold-away models with integrated cameras and other advanced features. ...Gartner also said the market share of the world's biggest handset maker Nokia recovered to 30.9 percent, from 29.7 percent in the second quarter. That figure, however, is still significantly below year-ago levels when it had 34.2 percent. ...LG Electronics overtook Japanese-Swedish Sony Ericsson as the world's No 5. handset maker. LG climbed to a 6.7 percent market share, up from 6 percent in the second quarter, while Sony Ericsson slipped slightly to 6.4 percent in the third quarter from 6.6 percent. But compared with year-ago periods, both companies had gained significant market share on the back of advanced phones."</i><br /><br />The summary of all this is that Nokia is in 1st place. Samsung is in 2nd, followed closely by Motorola in 3rd place. Siemens takes 4th place, LG is 5th, and Sony Ericsson is hanging on in 6th place. What this says to me is that you don't have to be selling the hottest new phones to be one of the top manufacturers. I rarely hear someone say "check out my new Samsung cell phone", but they appear to be doing something right. :wink:

[Kris Kumar]

Slow and steady wins the race, I guess. :-)

Moto should try to emphasize on the product quality. Over the weekend I was reading an article on how Moto is launching 20 products in this quarter. 8O No wonder some of the new models have problems.

I had posted the article blurb over here. (http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=46188#46188) And I have posted a copy of it below.

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Was browsing the pile of unread WSJ daily editions. Anyway, saw this interesting news story in WSJ dated Nov 8th. :? Wonder how I missed it, have been keeping busy at work and home. But reading a month old newspaper. Luckily had only 6 unread issues to clear out, and now it is sitting in the recycling bin. :-)

Motorola Promises On-Time Delivery This Holiday Season

Some wonder if the Grinch is about to pay another visit to Motorola Inc. The company has ambitious plans a year after its fortunes hit a new low during 2003's critical holiday season because of delays in delivering enough popular camera phones to wireless carriers...Motorola says there won't be another snafu....says Ron Garriques, executive Vice President.."Last year we struggled in getting enough phones to the market. But we have no issues like that this year-we are hitting on all cylinders."

The VP goes on to talk about things like Moto is planning to introduce 20 new phones in the final quarter. And most of these phones are sophisticated and high end ones. And that introducing 20 high end models is a big challenge when it comes to quality control. [Now we know] ;-) And this I thought was the most interesting point - "..Nokia typically staggers the introduction of such high end phones, bring them out just one or two each quarter...".

Well we now know that Nokia is smarter than Motorola. And that Samsung has overtaken Motorola as the number two handset maker in the US.

Looks like Moto was under a lot of pressure to put the defective MPx220 on the market. Pressure from Samsung. And last year's fiasco.

Moto, I hope you learnt some lessons!

[Janak Parekh]

What this says to me is that you don't have to be selling the hottest new phones to be one of the top manufacturers.
I'm not sure I agree with the assessment that Samsung doesn't sell "hot" phones. ;) Their "average phone" lineup is a lot more gadgety than Moto's, what with twist-and-flip camera phones.

--janak

[rbrome]

It's important to note that this is only Gartner's numbers, and there are different ways to measure these things. The other research houses sort of disagree. In-Stat/MDR and Strategy Analytics have recently put out similar reports that still have Motorola as #2:

http://rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=20620

There's no question that Samsung and Moto are neck-and-neck, but I think it's premature to declare Samsung the new #2...

[Jerry Raia]

Gartner is not always spot on but Moto has messed up no question.