LG aims to ship two million handsets in 2008; Arima to be direct beneficiary

LG Electronics has said it is aiming to grow its handset sales contribution in 2008, and Arima Communications, the OEM partner of LG, should be the direct beneficiary of the move.

During a March 12 event to launch new handsets in Taiwan, Finsen Chen, LG president of telecom business unit, Taiwan, said the company aims to grow its handset sales contribution by 7-8 percentage points on year in 2008, up from 24% in 2007. As for the Taiwan market, LG aims for a handset sales amount of US$100 million for the year.

Arima, which has already secured OEM orders for three 2.5G handsets from LG, is believed to be the direct beneficiary of the aggressive sales plans. Industry sources estimate that LG is likely to ship a total of two million handsets in 2008. The sources added in saying that Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) also produces another 2.5G handset for LG.

In addition to handsets supporting Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms, LG said it is closely working with Google to develop Android-based handsets. Chen remarked in saying that the company will introduce a Android handset to the Taiwan market during late 2008 to early 2009 if the company sees demand for the platform.

On a separate note, LG introduced five new handsets to the Taiwan market: the KS20, KF600, KF510, KP215 and KP320, of which, the KP320 is produced by Arima.

source