Motorola Mobility exits South Korea
Motorola Mobility will exit the phone market in South Korea, home of Samsung, the largest manufacturer globally, but the decision did not surprise the analysts, given the sales volume of the two companies in this county, writes the Wall Street Journal .
Motorola, now a division of Google, took in the first nine months of the year a market share of just 0.2% in South Korea, according to research firm Gartner. The company sold about 41,000 phones this period of the total market of 16 million.
Samsung Electronics, the largest phone manufacturer in the world, both in volume and in income, shipped 10.2 million phones on the local market, representing 64% of the phones sold in the first three quarters of the year. South Korean company controls, according to some studies, about a quarter of mobile phone sales worldwide.
Motorola announced that it has started yesterday to inform employees on the closing of its operations in South Korea, including the research & development and phone sales. The company will continue to sell telecom equipment and provide customer support.
“The changes in Korea reflect our plans to consolidate our global R&D efforts to foster collaboration, and to focus more attention on markets where we are best positioned to compete effectively,”
Motorola statement reads.
Also this year, the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer HTC has exited the South Korean market. This market proved particularly difficult for foreign manufacturers, as South Koreans have a special affinity to support the local manufacturers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Government also “helped” by introducing rules and other barriers to products from other countries. A rule created in 2005 kept Research in Motion and Apple away from the South Korean market until 2009.
Samsung is followed on the local market by another South Korean manufacturers LG Electronics and Pantech. Apple is in fourth place and Nokia, which has a factory in South Korea sold less than 10,000 phones in this country. Smartphone sales accounts for over 90% of the phones sold in South Korea between January and September, compared with less than 45% smartphones of all phones sold globally.
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