Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia was the dominant mobile phone maker in the Asia-Pacific region last year, accounting for 30.6 percent of total sales, an industry research group said yesterday.
International Data Corp attributed Nokia's success to a strong brand name and easy-to-use handsets, backed by an effective sales channel.
"Nokia is very well known in both the developing and developed markets," said Rachel Lo, IDC's senior telecommunications analyst.
"It has a good network for distribution with good support and we notice that even its 1998 models are still popular in some of the developing markets," she said.
Nokia sold 21.42 million mobile phones last year in the region. Motorola of the US was a distant second with a 20 percent market share or 14 million handsets sold, followed by Samsung of South Korea, Sweden's Ericsson and Siemens of Germany.
Features such as strong network distribution and easy-to-use handsets are the key to success if handset makers want to garner a bigger share of the Asia-Pacific market outside of Japan and South Korea, IDC said.
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