Colorful Screens Heat the Market For Cell Phones
by Kim Hyun-chul
September 06, 2001
Demand for cellular phones with color-display panels has been rising
rapidly despite earlier skepticism.
When the first cell phones supporting 256 colors were unveiled in May,
there were concerns about the sales potential because of a lack of
content to take advantage of the new screens. But they are selling much
faster than expected, and local makers are expanding production lines
for the devices.
Industry experts project that color-display mobile phones will account for
more than half the handsets sold in the domestic market within the next
six months.
Samsung Electronics Co., the market leader, said Wednesday that
96,000 such units were sold by all firms here through the end of July.
May sales were only 1,000, it said.
Samsung said its own July sales were 58,000 units, nearly 7 percent of
its total handset sales. That was double June's sales of 24,000
color-screen instruments. The company said it believes color-display
cell phones accounted for more than 15 percent of its handset sales in
August, although figures are not yet in.
Samsung said it held more than 85 percent of the domestic
color-display handset market, according to a company spokesman,
Kim Tae-hoon.
Beginning next year, the company plans to equip all of its handsets for
domestic consumption with color-display panels and sell
black-and-white devices only to export markets.
LG Electronics Inc., the first local company to launch color-display
handsets, said it sold 80,000 to 90,000 units with a color-display panel
in August alone, or about 30 percent of the firm's sales of cell phones.
According to Joo Eun-sook, a Seoul cell phone retailer, the first color
screen models were available only for personal communications
services, which uses technology different from that in digital-cellular
phones. In August, LG began producing models for the latter systems,
and sales soared.
Other manufacturers has also jumped on the color bandwagon. SK
Teletech, a unit of SK Telecom, plans to ship a color-display handset
equipped with a small digital camera this month. Hanwha Corp.
Telecommunication and Hyundai Curitel will unveil their own versions
next month. Foreign makers, such as Motorola and Nokia, have not yet
announced any plans for color units.
english.joins.com
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And I was sure that someone told me that "Nokia is leading the way with next generation CDMA products.."
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