Motorola lose ground

Nokia tightened its grip on the global mobile phone market in the second quarter of this year, taking advantage of a stumble by Motorola and strong demand from emerging markets around the world. Motorola was the only one of the top five vendors to lose market share when compared against the second quarter of 2006, despite a strategy of cutting prices to save its second-place ranking, according to figures from analyst Gartner. The company ended up with a 14.6 percent market share, barely ahead of third-place vendor Samsung Electronics with 13.4 percent, followed by Sony Ericsson with 9 percent and LG Electronics with 6.8 percent. By contrast, Nokia used its dominant 36.9 percent share of the market to begin selling more expensive products, such as the N95 it launched in March, a high-end phone with features such as built-in GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, and a MP3 music player. The company did stumble earlier this month when it issued a massive cell-phone battery recall after reports of overheating, then committed to offering free replacements for up to 46 million batteries.

Overall, the cell phone market saw sales rise by 17.4 percent to 270.9 million units in the second quarter of 2007, thanks largely to sales growth of 40.7 percent in Asia-Pacific and 24 percent in Latin America. Sales in mature markets were much slower, rising by only 7 percent in North America, 10.3 percent in Japan, and 11 percent in Western Europe.