Samsung dominant in touch screen phone market

The Star is Samsung's fastest-selling mobile

Samsung said yesterday that it has passed the 50 million mark for touch screen phone sales this year – an increase of 40 million units on 2008.

“We’ve seen remarkable growth in full touch screen mobiles this year as consumers increasingly enjoy the user experience and convenience that these devices put at their finger tips,” said JK Shin, executive vice president and head of Samsung Electronics’ mobile communications division.

“Samsung’s ability to deliver devices that appeal to a broad demographic of users has enabled us to accelerate the evolution toward full touch mobiles as mainstream devices."

Sales figures for Samsung's Star handset, introduced in May, underline this with more than 10 million units sold in six months, making it the company's fastest-selling mobile.

Samsung has also said it expects to exceed its sales target of 200 million mobile phones for the year. Touch screen devices will make up around 20 per cent of these sales, compared with five per cent of total sales for 2008.

Europe was the largest sales region with 19 million touch screen phones sold, while the US (6.3 million), China (3.4 million) and South Korea (3.0 million) were also significant markets for the manufacturer.

Pete Cunningham, a senior analyst at Canalys, said the figures are proof that Samsung has "positioned itself well in the market to meet the desire from consumers for touch screen devices".

"Whereas most vendors' touch screen devices are in the top tier of the products on offer, Samsung recognised the demand from the middle tier of the market and has driven its products in this sector to capitalise on this," he added.

"This has made devices such as The Star or Tocco very popular with users who see touch screen as the latest technology."

Cunningham said he believes Samsung is now the largest touch screen mobile phone vendor on the market, in term of sales.

However, he warned that user interfaces on touch screens are generally still not considered good enough among users. Recent research from Canalys found that only 47 per cent of touch screen phone users would choose the same UI on their next device.