iPhone takes 2.2% of Taiwan mobile market share!

The iPhone 3G has barely landed on Taiwanese shores and retailers are already lauding Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s success in cracking the island’s mobile market. According to sales reports, Apple has locked down a solid 2.2% of Taiwan’s mobile phone market. With 12,012 iPhone 3Gs sold during a December that saw a total of 546,000 mobile phone purchases, it’s clear that Chunghwa Telecom and the iPhone 3G are doing quite well for themselves.

The iPhone 3G now has the distinct honor of being the 6th most popular handset in the country. The jury is still out as to why the iPhone 3G caught on so quickly or whether or not the iPhone 3G stole market share from Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), Samsung, or Motorola (NYSE: MOT) (who all saw degraded market shares in December 2008). Notable is the fact that the iPhone 3G single-handedly took HTC out of the Top 6 handset manufacturers in Taiwan. While both Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and HTC managed to increase their market share last month, HTC was edged out of their home-country’s most-popular list with just a single percent of the Taiwan mobile market.

It’s clear that the iPhone 3G’s sleek design and innovative touchscreen UI is hard to ignore, but the handset’s almost meteoric rise to the top of Taiwanese charts in just a month’s worth of sales is impressive nonetheless.

Look for HTC to give Apple a bit more competition in 2009, what with the T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G2 expected to hit this May.

[Via: Electronista]