Samsung planning to expand line-up to increase sales

Samsung Electronics Co, the world's No.3 mobile phone vendor, plansto expnad its product line-up in attempt to boost its Taiwanese market share in 2004, a company executive said yesterday.

The South Korean company plans to expand introduce at least 10 new models into Taiwan this year adding largely low-end mobile phones, Y.C. Ko, general manager of Samsung Electronics Taiwan Co, told a press gathering.

"In the past, Samsung mostly focused on high-end mobile phones. To increase our market share, we plan to add low-end models to our product line," Ko said.

Samsung launched six models in Taiwan last year with most retailed at for around NT$10,000 each. The only exception was the company's first bar phone, SGH-C108T, which was launched last month with a retail price of around NT$5,000.

Middle and low-end models will make up 85 percent of Samsung's locally-launched handsets this year, with high-end models comprising the remaining 15 percent, the company said.

Samsung's move came after the world's No. 2 handset maker, Motorola Inc, said last month it would safeguard its local market position by releasing around 30 models this year.

Tom Hsiao (蕭承統), vice president of Motorola Asia-Pacific, blamed the lack of full-range models last year for the loss of domestic market share to BenQ Corp (明基電通), as well as Inventec Appliances Corp (英華達), which sells its mobile phones under the brand OKWAP.

Samsung sold about 400,000 cellphones into local consumers in 2003, said Chen Tsung-wen (陳聰文), a vice president of Samsung Taiwan.

That represented that Samsung only grabbed about 6 percent of the local market of around 6 million handset sales duirng the same period based on the estimate of the government-funded Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心)..

Taiwan's handset sales are expectedto rise by merely about 2.5 percent to around 6.15 million unikts this year, according to the MIC's forecasts.

But Samsung said its handset sales will double to 800,000 units this year due to the increase in new models, according to Chen. The units sales goal, if reached, will make Samsung's local market share soar to about 13 percent.

Responding to inquiries about the aggressive moves by international mobile phone giants to grab more of the market, industry analysts said they were still optimistic about the competitiveness of Taiwanese companies.

"It's still too early to say whether Taiwanese brands will suffer a setback in their share of the market," said Marty Kung (龔俊光), an analyst at the MIC.

"But, it's certain that Tai-wanese companies have a slim possibility of achieving large-scale advances this year," Kung said.

Steven Tseng (曾續良), an analyst with Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Corp (元大京華證券), said local companies should be able to maintain a 30-percent share of the market this year, as long as the price advantage they enjoy remains in place.