Samsung sees record handset news

Samsung shipped a record 42.6 million handsets in the third quarter, scoring significant gains in the U.S. and Europe.

The Korean vendor, which last quarter overcame Motorola as the second largest handset maker, took in $5.2 billion in handset revenues, up 13% from the same quarter last year. For the first three quarters of the year, Samsung shipped 115 million devices, already breaking the 114 million unit record it set for the entire calendar year in 2006. What’s more, Samsung reported seeing many of its gains in the 3G market, and plans to release more UMTS/high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) phones in the current quarter to meet that demand.

Of the devices shipped in the third quarter, 36% went to Europe and 30% went to the Americas. Samsung’s handset sales dominate its telecom division, but the manufacturer did see a slight uptick in infrastructure sales, likely driven by its base station orders for Sprint’s new WiMAX network.

In other handset news, Kyocera is negotiating with Sanyo to buy its handset division. No final agreement has been reached and no financial details were released, but a deal would strengthen the company’s position in the U.S. CDMA market where Sanyo is a major supplier to Sprint. Nokia had originally agreed to create a joint venture with Sanyo for CDMA devices, but they canceled the deal.