Motorola may be No. 4 in phones
Schaumburg-based Motorola Inc., the world's biggest mobile-phone maker 10 years ago, probably fell to fourth last quarter as it lost more market share to LG Electronics Inc.
An average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg indicated that the company may announce sales fell 26 percent to 26.1 million phones in the period. Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co. already have passed Motorola, and LG last week said shipments rose 45 percent to 27.7 million in the quarter.
Motorola's slide to No. 4 comes as much as six months sooner than analysts predicted, and calls into question the viability of Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown's plan to split off the money-losing phone unit.
Motorola has yet to unveil a touch-screen phone in the U.S. to compete with LG's Voyager or Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
"I expected Samsung to pass them, but I didn't think LG would pass them as well," said Pablo Perez-Fernandez, an analyst at Global Crown Capital LLC in San Francisco. "The decline was much worse than I thought." Perez-Fernandez, who rates the shares "neutral," puts Motorola's market share at 8.5 percent and LG's at 9.1 percent.
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