The sale of mobile phones in the global market has decreased by 9.4 per

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cent year-on-year, with shipments of 269.1 million units in the first quarter of 2009. However, smartphone sales surpassed 36.4 million units, a 12.7 per cent increase from the same period last year, according to research firm Gartner.

“There were some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China, but overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, based in Egham, the UK.

Speaking on the Indian market, Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst, said, “Even though India recorded highest ever net new subscriber addition in quarter one 2009, but this did not result in higher mobile device sales. In India, mobile device sales dropped by 11 per cent sequentially and 6 per cent year-on-year.”

Nokia continued to lead the mobile phone market with 97.4 million shipments in the first quarter 2009, but its share dropped to 36.2 per cent from 39.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2008.

Samsung retained second place and improved its market share to 19.1 per cent. LG stood at third position with 26.5 million units and 9.9 per cent market share. After dropping to the fifth position in the fourth quarter of 2008, Motorola overtook Sony Ericsson to regain fourth place.

Smartphone sales represented 13.5 per cent of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2008. The positive performance by Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple showed that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ success.

“Much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products, both in mid-tier and high-end devices,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. Symbian accounted for 49.3 per cent of worldwide smartphone operating systems (OS) market share in the first quarter of 2009, down from 56.9 per cent share in the first quarter of 2008. RIM’s smartphone OS market share reached 19.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2009, up from 13.3 per cent share in the first quarter of last year. The iPhone OS accounted for 10.8 per cent of the market, up from 5.3 per cent market share in the first quarter of 2008.