In the United States, Motorola Inc. gained four points of market share to claim 33 percent of the handset market last year, as arch-rival Nokia Corp. lost ground to rank fourth among vendors here, according to year-end figures from NPD Group.
U.S. residents bought 143 million new handsets last year, spending $8.8 billion after rebates and promotions, NPD reported last week. Fourth-quarter sales, typically the highest of the year, were up 14 percent from the prior year.
NPD said that myriad new devices accompanied by rebates and promotions from wireless carriers drove sales.
Music-enabled phone sales doubled over the course of 2006. In the first quarter, they accounted for 16 percent of sales, rising to 32 percent in fourth quarter. Two-thirds of all devices sold in the fourth quarter included a camera. Nearly half of sales in the fourth quarter included Bluetooth-equipped handsets.
Market details
The major handset vendors and their U.S. market share in 2006, according to NPD: Motorola (33 percent), LG Electronics Co. Ltd. (16 percent), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (15 percent) and Nokia (15 percent). Apparently the surge in mobile music interest did not give Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications-which has ridden a wave of interest in mobile music elsewhere with its Walkman-branded handsets-a substantial chunk of U.S. market share. SEMC does not work in CDMA technology, which represents 60 percent of the domestic market. Nokia’s limited CDMA play in the U.S. also constrains its market share.
Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless both posted 27-percent market share of all U.S. subscribers, though Cingular garnered 27 percent of new phone sales, besting Verizon Wireless in that category by 4 percentage points.
NPD noted that it based its findings on more than 150,000 monthly, online consumer surveys.
