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A report by research group Gartner on worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users for third quarter 2007 has seen the Finland-based phone maker trump its closest rival, Samsung by a run away margin.
The number of handsets sold globally reached 289m units, a 15% increase compared to the same period last year with Nokia accounting for about 110,2m of that figure. The revised sales figures give Nokia a 38.1% global market share.
Although demand was equally strong in mature markets, Carolina Milanesi, Gartner's research director for mobile devices, says mobile handset sales were mainly driven by strong performances in emerging markets particularly, the Middle East and Africa.
With sales of up to 41.8 million units, Korean electronics group, Samsung edged out Motorola from the second position. With a strong demand for Samsung's ultra edition II series on the rise, the Korean firm now commands 21% market share.
But the company would have to continue to closely manage its inventory in the last quarter of the year so it does not begin 2008 on a wrong footing, warned Milanesi.
Milanesi added that Motorola's sales into the channel remained weak and, with limited surplus stock, sales to end users were not enough to maintain its No. 2 position. This largely contributed to its market share dropping by 7.6 percentage points from the third quarter of 2006 relegating the vendor to the third position.
Although its sleek newest offering Razr2 accounting for 900 000 of the overall sales, Milanesi warned that the company would need a much stronger portfolio to see it recapture its lost market share.
Sony Ericsson's positive performance continued in the third quarter of 2007 as sales reached 25.4 million units.
LG sold 20.5 million units in the third quarter of 2007 and reached a market share of 7.1%. The company faced stronger competition in markets such as India, where the code division multiple access (CDMA) market has become challenging as operators closed deals with new entrants such as Chinese firm ZTE.
Although third quarter 2007 recorded much higher sales than Gartner had anticipated, Milanesi was upbeat regarding sales in the fourth quarter.
"We expect a quarter-on-quarter growth of at least 10% and, possibly, as high as 15%. This would result in worldwide mobile phone sales for 2007 being in line with our expectations of 1.134 billion units or slightly higher."
The top five vendors in order of ranking are, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericson and LG.
- Fin24
