Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest mobile-phone maker, lost market share to all its competitors in the first quarter, as operators increasingly picked handsets from Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, according to Gartner Inc.
Nokia's global market share fell to 28.9 percent from 34.6 percent a year earlier, researcher Gartner said in an e-mailed release.
Nokia's unit sales rose 12 percent to 44.2 million in the quarter from 39.5 million, slower than the overall 34 percent market growth to 153 million handsets, Gartner said.
"What Nokia needs is what I would call `wow' products -- in the developed markets, mobile phones are fashion items," said Ben Wood, an analyst at Gartner's UK office. "After many years of success, Nokia has now become the establishment and doesn't stand for the cool products."
Demand in the first quarter prompted the research company to raise its forecast for global handset sales this year to more than 600 million units, from an earlier forecast of 580 million, and from 520 million cellular phones sold last year. Sales were higher than expected in Western Europe, helped by extended Christmas promotions, and "buoyant" replacement, Gartner said.
Global shipments will rise 17 percent this year to 602 million units because more people are switching to so-called third-generation phones and demand in Asia is growing, Merrill Lynch & Co said yesterday. The 3G networks, which offer faster wireless Web access to e-mail, music and video, are creating demand for as many as 20 million handsets, Merrill Lynch said.
Motorola increased its market share to 16.4 percent from 14.7 percent a year earlier, and Samsung raised its share to 12.5 percent to from 10.8 percent in the quarter. Siemens' share of the market rose to 8 percent from 7.6 percent.
"Motorola and Samsung had a very good quarter," Wood said. "Especially Samsung is the company that everybody should watch."
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd, a venture between Ericsson AB and Sony Corp, increased its global share to 5.6 percent from 4.7 percent, followed by South Korea's LG Electronics Inc, which raised its share to 5.3 percent from 4.9 percent, Gartner said.
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