By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
Samsung Electronics confirmed Tuesday that it could surge ahead of Motorola to take the top spot in the saturated but highly competitive North American market in the second quarter.
The company also clarified that it will not compete with its bigger rival in Motorola's traditional home-turf in terms of shipments.
``The one thing that I can make sure is Samsung significantly narrowed the market gap with Motorola in North America and it is highly possible that we could beat the U.S. mobile phone maker in the second quarter,'' Choi Gee-sung, head of Samsung Electronics' telecom division told The Korea Times.
``The key thing is to maintain profitability not just to increase phone sales,'' he added. Choi was attending the ``18th Announcement of Ho-Am Prizes'' held in central Seoul.
According to data from Strategy Analytics, Motorola ranked as top in North America with 25.1 percent, followed by Samsung Electronics with 22.1 percent. LG was chasing Samsung with 21.1 percent, while Finland-based Nokia was No. 5 with 6.5 percent.
Choi said his company is still pushing the premium strategy for its mobiles in Europe and even Asian emerging markets.
``We are positive of achieving our yearly sales target of 20 million on our Soul phones thanks to an impressive performance in Europe,'' he said. Samsung will sell the Soul phone in Korea this week at the earliest.
``Samsung is not sticking with `low-priced strategy' in Asian emerging markets, meaning we are maintaining `dual-strategy' on a segment basis,'' he said.
Separately, Samsung Electronics CEO Lee Yoon-woo said the electronics giant was not considering revamping its business units further.
``No more restructuring,'' he replied on a question raised by the paper. ``I cannot tell you details about the setting up of a possible joint venture with Samsung SDI in the active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes business.''
But Lee partly admitted that he plans to meet Hynix Semiconductor CEO Kim Jong-kap to discuss current issues in the global chip industry.
``I should meet him, however, we haven't fixed a date, yet,'' Lee said. Samsung Electronics is the No. 1 chipmaker in the global industry, while Hynix ranks second.
Samsung and Hynix had been involved in intense ``verbal fights'' over Hynix's technology transfer plan to Taiwan's ProMOS after Samsung's former chip head Hwang Chang-gyu blasted it by saying it was a ``technology leak'' to competitors.
A week ago, the South Korea government gave Hynix the green-light to transfer its memory chip processing technology to ProMOS.