January 7, 201313 yr By William Maley Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com January 7, 2013 Volvo announced today that overall worldwide sales dropped 6.1% and that 2013 could be a difficult year for the brand. “Competition in the car industry will most likely continue to be as fierce as in 2012 as manufacturers will seek to capture volumes and market shares in a market where the economic situation will remain unstable. 2013 is therefore expected to be a challenging year in terms of margins and growth,” the company said. Volvo delivered 421,951 vehicles in 2012, marking a 6.1% decrease when compared to 2011. The markets which hurt Volvo the hardest were Sweden where sales dropped 11.2% (51,832 vehicles) and China which saw a 10.9% decrease (41,989 vehicles). The U.S. was a bright spot for Volvo, seeing a 1.2% increase for the year (41,989 vehicles). However it was off the pace with the market's 13% improvement for the year. Volvo says the reason for this is due to the company holding off on doing deep discounts. With numbers like these, Volvo's ambitious goal of selling 800,000 vehicles worldwide by 2020 could be that much harder to achieve. Source: Left Lane News William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster. View full article
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