Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc, the world's largest mobile-phone makers, widened their lead in the third quarter over Samsung Electronics Co as demand in Asia helped increase unit sales by 22 percent.
Nokia's market share rose to 35.1 percent from 32.5 percent a year earlier, Stamford, Connecticut-based researcher Gartner Inc said in a release. Motorola rose to 20.6 percent from 18.7 percent, and Samsung fell to 12.2 percent from 12.5 percent.
As a result of increases for Nokia and Motorola and the growth in Asia, Gartner raised its full-year sales forecast to 986 million units from its previous forecast of 960 million units. Lower-priced phones in Asian countries including China, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh helped sales expand from last year's total of 817 million.
"If you look at where you had the biggest growth, you had Asia grow 54 percent," Carolina Milanesi, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in an interview. Companies paid "more attention to the emerging markets and so having more, cheaper phones on the market is obviously driving sales."
Espoo, Finland-based Nokia increased its market share in every region except North America. The company regained the top spot in Latin America after losing it to Motorola a year ago, Gartner said. Nokia sold 88.1 million units in the quarter.
"Although Nokia has been criticized for lacking in the mid-tier, they still have the widest portfolio," Milanesi said. The companies that made large gains were able to "tap into those regions that are not saturated."
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola also lost ground in other markets, including Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Gartner said. Motorola sold 51.9 million units.
While Seoul-based Samsung lost market share, the company kept its No. 3 position by increasing sales, though at a slower pace than Nokia and Motorola.
"If you look at the vendors in the third quarter, Samsung was back," Milanesi said. She said Samsung struggled in the first half of the year. She said the 30.6 million units sold by Samsung was a "healthy" sales figure.
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, in fourth place, increased sales and won market share to 7.7 percent from 6.7 percent. In the No. 5 spot was LG Electronics Inc, with a market share falling to 6 percent from 6.5 percent. LG is suffering because it isn't offering enough different phones, Milanesi said.
BenQ Corp (
There are lots of "little things" that will change the mobile industry in the fourth quarter and into next year, Milanesi said. "Definitely there's a change in respect to content playing a bigger role" and the addition of more Internet applications on phones, she said.
In the fourth quarter there will be a "bigger focus" on music, Milanesi said.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS