Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period the previous calendar year, according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.
Smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009.
"In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
"This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points.
Android's momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year", she said.
Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags.
"Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China," said Milanesi.
The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor ranking.
Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4 per cent of market share in the first quarter of 2010. The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the "others" section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points.
"This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers' combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010," said Milanesi.
In the first quarter of 2010, Nokia's mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2 per cent decline in market share year-on-year.
Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 26.3 per cent year-on-year.
RIM's mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 45.9 per cent increase year-on-year.
Sony Ericsson sold enough units to remain in the top five mobile handset manufacturers, but its market share declined 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010.
The first quarter of 2010 was Apple's strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the number seven position with a 112.2 per cent increase in mobile devices sales.
Smartphones accounted for 17.3 per cent of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6 per cent in the same period in 2009.
