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Asia Pacific mobile phone sales rise 24 percent in 2004: Gartner

Fri Apr 8, 1:09 PM ET Technology - AFP

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050408/tc_afp/asiatelecommobile_050408170905

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Asia-Pacific mobile phone sales excluding Japan rose 24.1 percent to 164 million handsets in 2004 on strong demand for low-tier models, the Gartner research house said.

Reigning market leader Nokia increased its total annual sales in 2004 by 28 percent to 50.6 million handsets, driven by the popularity of its mid- and low-tier models in emerging markets India and China, Gartner said.


"Phones with cameras and colour screens accounted for the majority of sales in the low-tier segment, slowly eroding the share of black and white display handsets," Gartner analyst Ann Liang said.


Third-generation (3G) handsets, meanwhile, proved unpopular among Asians in 2004, although sales were expected to pick up this year as the technology becomes increasingly available in the region, according to Gartner.


"Sales of 3G handsets were disappointing, due to a lack of popular models and with operators continuing to focus 3G marketing efforts on customers with high calling patterns," said Liang.


Nokia's market share in Asia last year was 30.8 percent, 1.0 percentage points higher than in 2003.


Samsung grabbed second position in the region, with sales volumes increasing by 31 percent to 28.2 million, or 17.1 percent market share, on aggresive advertising and marketing, the research house said.


Motorola had the third biggest presence with sales of 18.6 million, despite losing 1.4 percentage points in market share to 11.3 percent.


LG, whose market share fell by 1.1 percentage points to 5.7 percent, was next with sales of 9.3 million handsets in 2004.


SonyEricsson, with a market share of 4.9 percent on 8.1 million sales, was in fifth position, while Bird registered a 1.0 percentage point decline in market share to 3.5 percent with sales of 5.8 million