Taiwan market: LGE squeezes Motorola out of handset top-5

According to retail channels, total handset shipment volumes in September in Taiwan were 610,000 units, and LG Electronics (LGE) surpassed Motorola to take fifth ranking in terms of sales.

For shipment volumes, Nokia remained on top with an over 31.5% market share. Sony Ericsson with close to 24% market share ranked second. Third-ranked vendor Samsung Electronics had a 19% market share while Motorola and LGE had 7.5% and 6.5% shares respectively.

In terms of sales volume, Sony Ericsson and Nokia remained the top-two with only two percentage point differences. LGE, with an over 6% market share, squeezed out Motorola for fifth place. Motorola had an about 5.5% market share. The sources indicated that LGE's KU380 handset saw significant growth in September.

Taiwan handset shipment volumes have declined since May due to the weak economy. Currently the market is distributed at the two extremes with stronger shipments for high-end and low-end handsets. 7.2 million units will be the high benchmark of 2008 compared to over 7.3 million units shipped in previous years, the sources noted