James Delahunty
8 Nov 2008 0:08
Research firm Strategy Analytics reported on Friday that Samsung has become the largest mobile phone vendor in the United States based on third quarter results. Despite global economic woes, the mobile phone market in the United States actually grew 6.2% from the same quarter of 2007, adding up to 47.4 million handsets in the quarter. South Korean consumer electronics vendor Samsung nabbed the largest share of the market at 22.4%.
Following Samsung (but still behind Motorola) was its rival also from South Korea, LG Electronics, which commanded an impressive 20.5% share of the U.S. market during the third quarter. In the previous year, Motorola had the top spot in the market with a 32.7% share, which fell dramatically to 21.1% in the same period of this year.
Motorola has warned that its fourth quarter results will also miss expectations, and that its mobile phone business will continue to weaken during the first half of 2009. Nokia took 8.4% of the U.S. market during the quarter which was up from levels seen earlier this year. Regardless, Nokia sells more handsets than Samsung, Motorola and LG Electronics combined globally, with a staggering 38% global market share.