LG sales soar by 6.4%, wins vendor award

INTERNATIONAL Data Corporation (IDC) has reported that the LG Electronics sales of third generation handsets (3G) rose to 6.4 per cent market share worldwide at the first quarter of this year.

The report is coming as LG has been named the most promising vendor of the year 2005 at the Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific Technology awards, held in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2005.

The IDC reports said LG recorded the sales of estimated 11 million units in the first quarter of the year to capture 6.4 per cent market share worldwide.

With this, it noted that LG has grown rapidly since it began the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) handset operations in 1996.

Recalling that in 2004, sales of its Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) handsets tripled over the previous year to 18 million units and CDMA sales increased to 26 million units.

“Making LG the world’s top CDMA vendor and the fastest-growing mobile handset supplier,” the company stated, even as LG also overtook Siemens as the world’s fourth most popular mobile phone brand in the first quarter of 2005.

According to IDC reports, the company had witnessed year-on-year growth of 26.9 per cent from 2004, just as last year, LG sold three million 3G handsets to Hutchison 3G, the global 3G services leader, which has networks in eight Asian and European countries.

President, LG Electronics, Middle East and Africa’s Operations, Mr. K. H. Kim, said “We have won further recognition of our leadership in mobile convergence technology with this award. We are on course to become a world leader in next generation mobile technology and, by introducing new models, LG is consolidating its reputation as a technology innovator”.

LG, he further said, is targeting sales of US$300 million in handsets in the Middle East and Africa region this year; globally we expect to register a 50 per cent growth to seize the third spot in handsets in two years.

The company, Champion Infotel, recalled unveiled six new features-rich mobile phones at CommunicAsia 2005.

The hi-tech new phones include the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting(DMB) phone, a new slide phone, a five-mega pixel camera phone, a 3-D game phone, an MP3 music phone and a handset modeled on a sports car.