Nokia Grabs More Market Share from Motorola

A Gartner research report says Nokia gained another 3.2% global handset market share, up to 36.9%, during the second quarter of 2007. Motorola's share of the pie was sliced by 7.3% to 14.6%, still good enough for second best, but increasing the likelihood of being surpassed by Samsung, which actually shipped more handsets. Samsung's market share rose 2.2% to 13.4%, as it was said to have "aggressively" built inventory in order to exploit Motorola's woes. Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi said Nokia's market share could reach 40%, as it registered Q2 expansion in every region except North America. Overall industry sales increased 17% to 270.9 million units in Q2. Gartner lowered its full-year growth forecast to 14%, or 1.13B units, from 1.15B units previously. The arrival of the iPhone is expected to negatively impact Motorola. Gartner's Milansei says Sony Ericsson, which added 2.4% market share to 9.0%, is a "solid number four" ahead of LG. Separately, Matsushita Electric Industrial said it has agreed to cover the costs related to Nokia's Aug. 14 recall of 46 million Nokia-branded batteries, and predicts it will incur between ¥10B - ¥20B ($86M - $172M) in costs. Nokia says the batteries could overheat, and offered to replace them for free (full story).

Sources: Bloomberg, Red Herring, Wall Street Journal
Commentary: Nokia Seeks to Block U.S. Import of Qualcomm Chips • Nokia Issues Warning on 46M Batteries • Goodbye Moto, Hello Nokia
Stocks/ETFs to watch: NOK, MOT, MC. ETFs: MTK, WMH
Earnings call transcripts: Nokia Q2 2007, Motorola Q2 2007

Seeking Alpha's news briefs are combined into a pre-market summary called Wall Street Breakfast. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email -- it's free and takes only seconds to sign up.

Comments

[Tom B]

Classic "shakeout". As the "pie" gets smaller (due to the iPhone"), the weaker players (MOT) will be pushed out by the relatively stronger players (Nokia).

[pavlov]

N2 is THE phone to own.

neonode.com

NEON-NASDAQ