Motorola Executives Lose Sleep over Samsung's Drive for Success

Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., a South Korean cellphone manufacturer, is reportedly causing Motorola, Inc. executives to have nightmares while Samsung surges ahead of Motorola in the cellphone market. Samsung has doubled its market share in the past two years, overtaking Siemens AG and Sony Ericsson, to become the world's third largest cellphone manufacturer in 2002. Considering that Samsung was in the number six production slot in 2000, Motorola and Nokia have reason to be concerned. According to wireless industry analysts, Samsung is predicted to boost its global share to 15% percent by 2004. Motorola reportedly had 14.4% of the market share at the end of Q3 in 2002, which means that Samsung is not that far from overtaking Motorola very soon.

Motorola lost its number one ranking four years ago to Nokia and doesn't want to slip even further due to Samsung's aggressive drive to succeed. While Motorola was the first manufacturer of the cellphone and perfected its initial capabilities, Samsung was first to launch cellphones with voice-activated dialing, Web browsing capabilities and to incorporate global positioning system technology into a cellphone. According to Peter Skarzynski, Senior Vice President of Wireless Terminals at Samsung, Samsung rolled out a new cellphone every three weeks in the United States in 2002, and reportedly plans to launch new cellphones with enhanced capabilities on an even faster schedule in 2003.