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Telecom & Wireless

Motorola Still Owns US Handset Market

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Motorola’s (NYSE:MOT) handset business came close to collapse after its failure to replace its successful RAZR cost it the No.2 global market share position in its industry. The firm’s shares crashed from over $26 in late 2006 to just above $3 last March. The stock trades at $6.55 now. Motorola’s new Droid product has shown early success, and experts believe that the company has a modest chance of a profit in its cellphone business by the end of this year.

Motorola still dominates one market–the US. comScore reports that the company had 23.5% of the original equipment manufacturer business in America the fourth quarter, down from 24.9% in the third.

Korean handset companies hold almost 45% of the US. LG with a 21.9% share and Samsung at 21.2%. Along with Motorola, these firms make mid-priced handsets with modest features which often include simple cameras, web access, and text keyboards. Most of the phones that AT&T Wireless gives away with subscriber plans are from LG, Motorola, and Samsung. Among OEMs, Nokia (NYSE:MOT) has a 9.2% and RIM (NASDAQ:RIMM) has 7%.

Smartphone operating system market share was dominated by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and RIM in the fourth quarter of last year. RIM had a 41.6% share to Apple’s 25.3%. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) was third with and 18% share. Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) share of US mobile OS was only 5.2% but that was double the figure in the third quarter of 2009. The growth in the list of the Android OS powered phones will almost certainly cause a sharp increase in the search engine company’s figure for the current quarter.

Motorola may have lost everything else, but it still controls its home market.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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