Samsung sees 9 percent global handset sales growth

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - South Korea's Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), the world's No. 2 handset maker, said on Tuesday it sees the global handset market growing by 9 percent in 2008, and expects to sell 200 million units during the year.

"We expect the overall mobile market size in 2008 to be about 1.2 billion units, a 9 per cent increase from 2007," Youngcho Chi, Senior Vice President of Samsung Electronics' Mobile Communications division, told Reuters in an email.

"Of these, we aim to achieve sales of 200 million units, a 25 per cent increase from the 161 million units sold in 2007," Chi said.

Samsung, which trails Finland's Nokia (NOK1V.HE) in the cellphone market, sold 46.3 million phones in the first quarter, equal to a record number sold in the fourth quarter.

Margins in the unit rose to a strong 16 percent from the fourth quarter's 11 percent.

The company, also the world's top maker of memory chips, said it expected the global mobile handset market to grow 4-5 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter.

(Reporting by Jennifer Tan, editing by Neil Chatterjee)