A battle of giants - Korean mobile phone makers becoming more aggressive

Three Korean mobile phone makers - Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel Co. strategise to increase their market share in the global camera phone market against current giants of Nokia, or NEC - the article doesn't mention Sony Ericsson, but this is probably implied. However, it is interesting that the article doesn't mention Motorola - which had trouble in rolling out camera phones last year, and Siemens - Siemens mobile phone production is so insignificant for the company that it might be divested, sooner or later.

Samsung had a market share of 11.8% of global camera-phone sales of 84 million units in 2003. Samsung was ranked third after NEC of Japan with 15.5% and Finland's Nokia with 13%, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. LG was ranked five.

The companies aim to add more features, and ramp up production to capture a higher share of the market. The share of camera phones to total production in all three companies will be around 50 percent.

The global camera-phone market this year will double to 170 million units from 84 million last year, Strategy Analytics forecast.