Motorola in surprise sales rise

Mobile phone giant Motorola has surprised investors by selling more handsets in the second quarter of the year than during the first.

It sold 28.1 million phones between April and June, one million higher than the previous three months.

It unexpectedly held off competition from LG to stay the world's third biggest mobile phone company.

Motorola also unveiled net profits of $4m (£2m), compared to a loss of $28m in the second quarter of 2007.

Its sales fell 7.4% to $8.1bn, but the total was higher than had been expected.

Motorola has struggled to come up with a new handset to follow its highly successful Razr phone. Its successor, the Razr 2, was outsold by the original design by 3 to 1.

BIGGEST MOBILE PHONE FIRMS 1. Nokia 2. Samsung 3. Motorola 4. LG Electronics 5. Sony Ericsson Source: Strategy Analystics

Nokia was still the world's most successful mobile phone company in the second quarter of 2008, said industry observers Strategy Analytics.

The Finnish company sold 122 million of the 297 million handsets sold worldwide during the period.

Samsung was second with sales of 46 million, while LG Electronics was fourth with sales of 28 million.

Sony Ericsson, which made a loss in the second quarter for the first time since the end of 2003, hung on to fifth spot.

Apple, sold 700,000 iPhones in the second quarter, a significant fall from the 1.7 million sales it made in the previous three months.

Strategy Analytics said this was because Apple was running down stock of its older iPhone ahead of the launch of the 2.0 version which went on sale at the end of June.