Changes in the market also appeared, such as Pantech & Curitel's becoming the firm with the second largest market share in the upper-end mobile phone market (in which each unit costs more than W500,000) leaving LG Electronics as the No. 3 firm in the market.

According to the industry surveys on Sunday, Samsung Electronics, Pantech & Curitel and LG Electronics -- the "Big Three" firms -- sold a total of 1.022 million units of upper-end mobile phones with 1 million mega pixel cameras from January to July this year. Samsung Electronics sold 447,400 units, Pantech & Curitel sold 295,000 units and LG Electronics sold 279,800 units.

In particular, Samsung noted that its best selling model was the "SPH-V4400," a 2 million mega pixel camcoder phone that can be hooked up to a TV. Despite its high price, more than 50,000 units were sold each month on average.

Pantech & Curitel introduced 7 different models of mega pixel level camera phones in the same period and sold 295,000 units. Its new 1.3 million mega pixel "PG-K6500" model sold more than 92,000 units, said the firm. In addition, the company added that its "PG-S5000A" was introduced in the market in June and sold more than 50,000 units in just a month, revealing the possibility that it may become a hit model.

LG Electronics introduced its new "LG-LP3000" MP3 mobile phone this January and sold 180,000 units by July. A total of 279,800 LG models were sold. It seems that LG Electronics expected a boost by being the first firm to introduce MP3 and 200 million mega pixel phones to the market, but the results were rather disappointing.

An industry official explained that there was intense competition in the market to introduce 1 million mega pixel-plus mobile phones from the beginning of this year, but it seems that rapid introduction did not translate into remarkable sales. Another official said, "It is very difficult to predict high-end mobile phone market conditions because 3 million mega pixel phones are slowly appearing and competition between companies is very wild."

(englishnews@chosun.com )