Motorola slips to eighth place in handsets

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Motorola slips to eighth place in handsets

iSuppli figures put the firm marginally behind ZTE and Apple

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 18 May, 2010

READ MORE: Metrics | Motorola | Handset

Only weeks after Motorola suffered the humiliation of being overtaken in the global handset stakes by ZTE, it has slipped still further in the first quarter of 2010, into eighth place, according to analysts at iSuppli.

This, of course, is partly because Motorola has been undergoing a difficult shift away from volume and towards high margin smartphones. This may well result in a permanent position outside the global top five, as - like Sony Ericsson - the US firm pursues a 'quality not quantity' approach more akin to Apple than Samsung or Nokia.

However, it is worrying for Motorola that, according to iSuppli calculations, it is losing share to other smartphone specialists such as RIM, even in the US market where it has marketed its new Android handset range most strongly, and where it does not face a significant presence from Nokia or Sony Ericsson. In its own financial results, models like the Verizon Droid showed strong growth, but they are being outpaced by RIM, at least in their early months on the market.

So RIM saw its shipments rise by 3.6% in the fourth quarter, against an industry-wide fall of 14% year-on-year to 288.1m units. This gave the BlackBerry maker a spot in the top five, with Apple, rising from ninth to sixth place, hard on its heels, followed in turn by ZTE and Motorola. Sony Ericsson clawed back its fourth position, though there is a major gulf between these vendors, all with shares between 3% and 6%, and the big three - Nokia on 37%, Samsung on 22% and LG on 9.4%. In fact, the differences between Motorola, ZTE and Apple are miniscule, with all of them on 3% share, while RIM and Sony Ericsson are almost neck-and-neck on 3.6% too. Oddly, though, iSuppli omits HTC, which other analysts put on around the same level as RIM. iSuppli rounds out its top 10 with two Chinese players, Huawei on 2.1% and TCL-Alcatel on 1.8%.