Industry gangs up on Motorola

Mobile World Congress 2008

Motorola's declining sales have caused something of a feeding frenzy among other handset manufacturers.

Samsung president Gee Sung Choi opened his press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with the announcement that Samsung had taken over from Motorola to become the world's number two mobile handset provider.

Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson boss Hideki Komiyama threw in his ha'pennyworth by stating that his company would be gunning for the number three position with a range of new handsets for the US market. He also ruled out buying Motorola's handset division.

Now LG has said it has designs on Motorola's position too. "We intend to be the number four consumer brand by 2010," said Jeremy Newing, head of mobile marketing for LG.

"We've seen this kind of behaviour from Motorola before, around five years ago, when they had few handsets and declining market share.

"Then they brought out the Razr and things were good again but they've done nothing more than a colour refresh on that."

However Motorola may be fighting back along the same lines. The company has announced three new handsets, including a new Rokr music phone and a combined Wi-Fi/GSM Moto handset.