Stat Watch: Moto Put in Third Place … Again

File under “expected”: Motorola Inc.’s been relegated to third place by yet another analyst firm. The device maker just can’t seem to get a break as it looks forward to splitting in half to try to regain its former glory.

The ranking comes as firms analyze global handset makers’ first-quarter rankings and predict market share for the remainder of the year.

First, though, an interesting contradiction: iSuppli Corp. said earlier this month the mobile handset market appeared to unaffected by the first-quarter economic slowdown in the United States. But two other firms – Strategy Analytics and NPD Group – reported 5 percent and 22 percent declines, respectively, in purchases of new mobile devices in the first quarter.

iSuppli said shipments of mobile devices reached 296 million units, up 17 percent from 253 million in the first quarter of 2007. The research company did say shipments were 12.4 percent lower than the 338 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the quarter after the holiday sales rush, so fewer sales are to be expected.

There is one fact the firms agree on: Motorola continues to lose customers. IDC and Strategy Analytics say the equipment maker’s market share shrunk to 25 percent in the first quarter, down from 37 percent a year earlier. LG Electronics and Samsung are likely to surpass Motorola in cell phone sales this year, the firms said.

iSuppli concurred, placing Motorola in third place behind Samsung and Nokia. As mentioned, that news isn’t really news – Motorola’s been in third place for months now. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these mobile handset reports is that, like some new economy cars, emerging players are coming from China. Huawei and ZTE are the top contenders with OEM products now on some U.S. operators’ networks, iSuppli noted.

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