Toyota’s domestic sales down 26.6% in 1st half of 2009

Toyota said Tuesday that its domestic sales plunged 26.6 percent year-on-year to 593,173 units in the first half of 2009 due to sluggish auto demand amid the global economic recession.
In June, the world's largest automaker suffered a smaller decline in sales, down by 11.4 percent to 112,591 units following an over 20 percent fall in the previous month. In the January-June period, Toyota's domestic market share, excluding minicars, stood at 45.5 percent, down by 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the automaker's domestic production plummeted 49.0 percent to 1,101,021 units, compared with a 43.1 percent drop to 2,539,673 units in its worldwide output.