By Wailin Wong
Motorola Inc. has ceded the top spot in U.S. mobile-phone sales to Samsung Electronics Co., according to a report released Friday by Boston-based research firm Strategy Analytics.
In the third quarter, Samsung posted market share of 22.4 percent to become the No. 1 handset manufacturer in the U.S. for the first time. Schaumburg-based Motorola fell to second place with a 21.1 percent share.
About 30 percent of mobile phone shipments in the U.S. are smart phones, devices that can e-mail and surf the Web.
Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha has acknowledged that Motorola needs to put out more smart phones and will face challenges through the first half of 2009 while it develops products.
Jha scrapped a number of launches scheduled for early next year to overhaul the mobile-phone division.
"One of the key challenges for Motorola is they don't have a product in [the smart-phone] segment," said Bonny Joy, an analyst at Strategy Analytics.
"They're not part of the growth segment in North America, and they're paying the price."
Jha said Motorola will have a smart phone running Windows Mobile 6.5 by the second half of next year, along with a device powered by Google's Android open-source software.
"The smart phones are very saleable even in developing countries. People want to be updated of a lot of things."
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