Mobile phone sales fall 8.6%

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Vincent Maher

PARIS: Global mobile phone sales fell a record 8.6% in the first quarter to 269 million units and will likely decline 4.2% for the full year, the Gartner research group said.

The anticipated fall comes after more than six years of uninterrupted growth and was the biggest quarterly decline since Gartner began monitoring in 2001.

However, sales of "smartphones," which enable a user to surf the Internet or watch video, rose 12.7% in the first quarter to 36.4 million units.

Smartphones accounted for 13.5% of mobile phone sales in the first quarter against 11% in the same period last year, according to Gartner.

Nokia of Finland held on to its first place ranking, with sales of 97 million mobile phones but saw its market share fall to 36.2% from 39.1% in first quarter 2008.

Samsung of South Korea, in second place, had a 19.1% share, up from 14.4%, thanks to a 21.4% gain in sales.

Motorola of the United States suffered a near 45% fall in sales in the first quarter and lost its third place position to LG of South Korea.

Source: AFP

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