Global mobile phone sales increased marginally by 0.7 per cent to nearly 425.8 million units in the first quarter of 2013, helped by growth in Asia Pacific region.
Mobile phone sales stood at 422.9 million units in the January-March 2012 quarter, Gartner said in a statement.
Samsung led the pack with 23.6 per cent market share with 100.65 million units, followed by Nokia at 14.8 per cent share (63.21 million units) and Apple at nine per cent (38.33 million units).
LG Electronics stood fourth (15.61 million units), while ZTE ranked fifth (14.60 million units) and Sony eighth (7.95 million units) in the list.
“More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia-Pacific in the first quarter of 2013, which helped the region increase its share of global mobile phones to 53.1 per cent year-on-year,” Gartner Principal Research Analyst Anshul Gupta said.
Sales in the EMEA region declined 3.6 per cent, while that in North America and Latin America’s markets fell 9.5 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively.
Japan saw its mobile phone sales drop 7.3 per cent in the reported period, the statement said.
Worldwide smartphone sales totalled 210 million units in the first quarter of 2013, up 42.9 per cent from the first quarter of 2012.
Samsung’s share in the smartphones category reached 30.8 per cent with 64.74 million units, followed by Apple (18.2 per cent) and LG (4.8 per cent) in Q1 2013.
In the first quarter of 2013, smartphones accounted for 49.3 per cent of sales of mobile phones worldwide. This is up from 34.8 per cent in Q1 2012 and 44 per cent in Q4 2012.
On the other hand, sales of feature phones contracted 21.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2013.