LG aims to sell 140m mobile phones globally this year, with a view to becoming the world’s second largest handset maker by 2012.

The 2010 sales forecast would be a 20 per cent increase on LG’s 2009 handset sales. Samsung – currently the world’s number two in terms of handset sales – shifted just under 200m phones in 2008 and hoped to sell just over that figure last year.

Roughly 1.2bn mobile phones were sold in the UK last year, according to Gartner. LG hasn’t released its UK numbers for 2009 yet, but said that “robust growth in emerging and European markets” throughout the year helped push the value of its mobile arm up by 21 per cent to £21bn.

Nokia still leads the market and has already published a bullish global sales figure for 2010 – 500m handsets.

Android will be central to LG achieving its sales forecast, with the company promising to launch 20 smartphones this year, ten of which will be based on the Google OS.

Samsung unveiled its own OS, Bada, late last year. LG said it has no plans for such a move, though. ®