Global mobile phone sales have seen a decline in the first quarter (Jan-March 2012) for the first time after nearly 10 quarters. “Worldwide sales of mobile phones reached 42 crore units in the quarter, a 2 per cent decline on sales in the comparable quarter last year.

Traditionally considered to be a strong quarter for mobiles in Asia driven by the Chinese New Year, the first quarter saw the absence of new product launches from leading manufacturers.

“This decline is more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia-Pacific region,” Mr Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner said.

All vendors were impacted at different levels. While tier-one players such as Nokia were adversely impacted on sell-in numbers (sold into retail), white-box (products without a label) vendors were unable to adjust production and were left with a build-up in inventory by the end of the quarter.

Gartner expects some of this volume to be sold during the next couple of quarters, because the channel is likely to lower prices to dispose of the stock.

“The lower results in the first quarter have led us to be cautious about sales for the remainder of the year. The continued roll-out of third-generation (3G)-based smartphones by local and regional manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Yulong and TCL Communication should help spur demand in China,” a Gartner analysis on the first-quarter performance said.

In addition, the arrival of new products in mature markets based on new versions of the Android and Windows Phone operating systems (OSs), and the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 will help drive a stronger second half in Western Europe and North America.

“However, as we are starting to update our market forecast, we feel a downward adjustment to our 2012 figures, in the range of 20 million units, is unavoidable,” it said.

Samsung became the world’s top mobile handset vendor during the quarter, displacing Nokia which had held the No. 1 spot since 1998. Samsung’s mobile phone sales reached 8.66 crore, a 25.9 per cent increase from last year. It took back the world’s No. 1 smartphone position from Apple, selling 3.8 crore smartphones worldwide.

In addition, Samsung’s Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2012 represented more than 40 per cent of Android-based smartphone sales worldwide; no other vendors achieved more than a 10 per cent share of the market, Gartner said.

kurmanath@thehindu.co.in

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