Sony Ericsson has managed to overtake Nokia is terms of handset sales value in Taiwan, although it still trails slightly in terms of numbers of phones sold. A report from Taiwan's Chinese language Economic Daily News, citing sources in the retail trade said that Sony Ericsson took 31.6% of the sales value. This compared to 30.8% of the cash value for Nokia.

In terms of handset sales volume though, Nokia still leads the Taiwan market with over 30%, compared to 24.8% market share for Sony Ericsson.

The market has been strongly moving towards selling 3G handsets which would support Sony Ericsson as it has fewer low-cost handsets than Nokia. The operators have also stepped up subsidies for their higher end handsets.

According to earlier figures from the MIC (Market Intelligence Center, Taiwan), Taiwanese mobile phone market volume for the entire 2008 is expected to slightly advance 0.9% to 7.2 million units, with the share of WCDMA models expected to top 40%.

The share of WCDMA models jumped to 35.8% in the first quarter of 2008, up 7.8 percentage points from the fourth quarter 2007, with its market volume increasing by 181,000 units to 679,000 units in the first quarter. The share of GSM/GPRS models fell 7.4 percentage points to 60.6%, as many subscribers switched to WCDMA models.

Source:cellular-news