Top Mobile Phone Makers See Market Share Slip
HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters )
-Nokia, Motorola and Erics-
son, the world's leading mobile.
phone makers, saw their global
market shares dip in the second
quarter from the first quarter, in-
dustry research group Dataquest
said on Tuesday.
Nokia Oyj Abp of Finland
had a market share of 27.5% vs.
27.9% in .the first quarter. Its
nearest rival, Motorola Inc. of
the U.S., saw its position dip to
15.6% from 16%.
Sweden's Telefonaktiebolaget
LM Ericsson, which has been
plagued by components shortages
and production problems at its
Ioss-making cellular phone' divi-
sion, saw its market share fall to
10.3% in the second quarter
from 11.5%,
That came as competition
heats up in the sector and more
mobile phone makers enter the
field.
Nokia, the world most profit-
able mobile-phone maker, and
Motorola both sold more mobile
phones in the second quarter
than in the first quarter,
Dataquest said. Ericsson sold
slightly fewer.
Nokia Remains Dominant
Nokia, which stunned the mar-
ket in July by warning that third-
quarter profits would be lower
than those of the second quarter
due to the delay of new cell-
phone models, remains by far the
leading player in the increasingly
competitive market.
There are about 570 million
mobile phone users globally.
Nokia said in July that it
would concentrate on gaining
market share, even at the ex-
pense of margins in the short
term. Motorola and Ericsson
have said they would rather
focus on profitability for their
mobile phone divisions. .
Nokia's success lies partly in
its logistics skills, but also in its
ability to launch quickly trendy
and high-tech models in volumes
that cater to the various de-
mands of consumers.
Motorola and Ericsson have
not been as successful here. They
were unable to see at an early
stage the importance of the
cheap phones, which now ac-
count for 60% of all phone sales.
While leading mobile-phone
makers give some information
about their market share, they
do not give comparisons to their
rivals. Gartner Group's
Dataquest is one of the few re-
searchers providing global market
share data for most cell-phone
makers.
Second- Tier Players Challenge
Dataquest showed that Pana-
sonic, Alcatel, Siemens and Sam-
sung were all rougly neck-and-
neck with about 5.5%-5.6% mar-
ket share each.
Of the smaller players, South
Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.
saw its market share dip to 5,5%
from 6.3%.
This second tier of cell-phone
makers should be worrying the
larger players, analysts say, espe-
cially Qermany's Siemens. That
company has been moving quick-
ly to streamline its phone unit,
and has the advantage that it
makes mobile network gear as
well as wireless phones, while Pa-
nasonic and Samsung do not.
Siemens, like Ericsson, has
begun outsourcing production to
get phones out to the market
quicker and cheaper.
But Asian players are betting
that a new generation of technoI-
ogy, such as third-generation or
UMTS, will be their window of
opportunitY to gain marker
share, analysts say.
France's Alcatel has moved
past Siemens as Western Eu-
rope's third-largest cellphone
maker, with a 12.4% market
share vs. Siemens' 12.1 %. In the
first quarter, Siemens was No. 3
behind Motorola and Nokia.
Ericsson was fifth in market
share in Western Europe, where
Philips was sixth, according to
Gartner's Dataquest.
IBD 13 Sept 2000 |
