LG Electronics said Wednesday that it has set a goal of selling 140 million cell phones in 2010. The South Korea-based handset maker also revealed that it plans to become one of the top two mobile-device manufacturers in the world by 2012.
To help boost unit sales, LG will focus on the lucrative smartphone market. Hopes are especially high for Android-based phones, which are expected to make up more than half of LG’s upcoming smartphone releases, the company said.
“It is still early days for Android as far as sales are concerned, but generally both carriers and consumers have been very positive on the OS and there is a lot of momentum,” said Gartner Research Director Carolina Milanesi. “LG might be getting into the game a bit later than HTC and a little more quietly than Motorola, but it is certainly set to take advantage of the momentum we are seeing.”
A Long Way To Go
LG increased its global handset shipments from 80 million in 2007 to 100 million in 2008, and to an estimated 116 million in 2009, according to preliminary figures from Gartner. “So 140 million is possible,” Milanesi said.
Still, LG has a long way to go before it can challenge market leader Nokia or even the world’s second-biggest handset maker, Samsung, which held a 19.6 percent market share in the third quarter — up from 17.1 percent a year earlier. Samsung’s strong third-quarter results were driven by robust sales of touchscreen devices, QWERTY phones, and smartphones in Western Europe and the U.S. as well as steady sales of refreshed older products in emerging markets, Milanesi said.
LG held a 10.3 percent share of the global cell-phone market in the third quarter — up from 7.8 percent in the year-earlier period. But most of the company’s third-quarter sales…