Worldwide sales of mobile phones were 419.1 million in the first quarter of 2012 (Q1 2012), a 2% decline on sales in the comparable quarter last year, according to Gartner.
Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region.
"The first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia – which is driven by Chinese New Year, saw a lack of new product launches from leading manufacturers, and users delayed upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving later in the year," he added.
While tier-one players such as Nokia were adversely impacted on sell-in numbers (sold into retail), white-box vendors have suffered the most as they were unable to adjust production and left with a build-up in stocks by the end of the quarter.
Gartner expects this inventory will be sold during the next couple of quarters, because the channel is likely to lower the prices to dispose of the stock.
Samsung displaced Nokia as the world’s top mobile handset vendor during the quarter, with sales of 86.6 million units, a 25.9% increase from last year.
Nokia’s mobile handset sales decreased by 22.7% to 83.2 million units.
Samsung also took back the world’s No. 1 smartphone position from Apple, selling 38 million smartphones worldwide.
Samsung’s Android-based smartphone sales in Q1 2012 were more than 40% of Android-based smartphone sales worldwide while no other vendors achieved more than a 10% share of the market, Gartner said.
The combined share of Apple and Samsung raised to 49.3%, up from 29.3% in Q1 2011, widening their lead over Nokia, which saw its smartphone market share drop to 9.2%.
RIM mobile handsets sales were 9.9 million in Q1 2012, though its global share fell to 2.4% due to increased competition in its international market strongholds.
In the smartphone OS market, Android occupied more than half of all smartphone sales at 56.1% in the first quarter of 2012.
Gartner noted the smartphone market has become highly commoditized and differentiation is becoming a challenge for manufacturers.
The arrival of new products in mature markets based on new versions of the Android and Windows Phone operating systems, and the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 will help drive a stronger second half in Western Europe and North America, the research firm noted.
