Mobile phone sales in Western Europe from January to March fell 16.4% from a year ago. This was the first decline since research firm Gartner started tracking the market in 2001, as the economic slowdown hurt demand.
'Operators in this region have been driving sales of higher-end devices by offering higher subsidies but with longer contract periods, which is having a negative impact on replacement cycles,' Gartner said.
'Sales of high-end devices were also adversely affected by the economic slowdown that many countries are experiencing,' it added.
Global mobile phone industry volumes are set to grow 10-15% this year, helped by booming demand in emerging markets, the research firm predicted.
Handset vendors sold 294.3 million mobile phones globally in the January-March quarter, with strong demand in emerging markets lifting sales 13.6% from a year earlier, Gartner said.
The main gainer from surging sales in emerging markets was the world's largest maker Nokia, whose market share rose to 39.1% in the first quarter from 35.5% in the same quarter the previous year. The Finnish company has a strong lead in emerging markets.
South Korea's Samsung had 14.4% of the total market in the quarter, compared with 10.2% for struggling US vendor Motorola. Sony Ericsson's market share fell to 7.5%, dented by the fall in the western European market. LG Electronics took the No. 4 spot from the Swedish-Japanese joint venture as its market share rose to 8%.
