LG Arena draws 1 million pre-orders
updated 09:05 am EST, Thu March 5, 2009
LG Arena 1m Pre-orders
LG on Thursday revealed that it has already obtained 1 million pre-orders for the KM900 Arena, its new full-touch flagship. The tally comes less than a month after the Arena was introduced at Mobile World Congress in February and is enough to have prompted LG to increase the number of countries slated for the European launch this month. The Korean company acknowledges that the pre-orders are worldwide but hasn't broken them down by country or region.
Reaching the symbolic milestone has given the cellphone designer confidence that it should achieve record sales. The company's previous best-seller, the conventional but music-oriented Chocolate, managed 500,000 advance purchases and ultimately sold approximately 20 million examples before it was replaced. LG's highest-profile touchscreen phone to date, the Viewty, cracked the 10 million unit mark without the advantage of early demand.
The scale of the pre-orders and anticipated sales gives LG an edge in likely market share for touchscreen phones and reflects its relative scale. Although Apple is often cited as one of the most popular makers of touchscreen phones, its total share amounted to 1.1 percent of the world market at the end of 2008. LG in turn netted 8.3 percent of the market helped both by its much wider international reach as well as its combination of both multiple touchscreen models as well as conventional phones.
The Arena has a handful of technical advantages over the current-generation iPhone, including a 5-megapixel camera, a higher-resolution 800x480 display and a microSDHC card slot. [via Telecoms Korea]
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Joined: Aug 2001
Meaningless
Saying you have one million pre-orders is no reflection of consumer demand or desire whatsoever. These are reseller orders.
The product might be a hit, or might not. This story is essentially meaningless, particularly in light of the fact that almost any model of phone can sell a million copies.