EGHAM, UK – Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users reached 419.1 million units in the first quarter of 2012, a 2% decline year-over-year, says Gartner. This is the first time since the second quarter of 2009 that the market exhibited a decline, the firm notes.

“Global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia – which is driven by Chinese New Year, saw a lack of new product launches from leading manufacturers, and users delayed upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving later in the year.”

All vendors were impacted at different levels; however, white-box vendors seem to have suffered the most, the firm says. While tier one players such as Nokia were negatively impacted on sell-in numbers (sold into retail), white-box vendors were unable to adjust production and were left with a buildup 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 the prices to dispose of the stock.

“The lower results in the first quarter of 2012 have led us to be cautious about sales for the remainder of the year,” said Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The continued roll-out of third generation-based smartphones by local and regional manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Yulong and TCL Communication should help spur demand in China. In addition, the arrival of new products in mature markets based on new versions of the Android and Windows Phone operating systems, 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.”

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 86.6 million units, up 25.9% from last year. Samsung took back the world’s No. 1 smartphone position from Apple, selling 38 million smartphones worldwide. In addition, Samsung’s Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2012 represented more than 40% of Android-based smartphone sales worldwide; no other vendors achieved more than a 10% share of the market, says Gartner.

Sales of smartphones continued to drive mobile device market growth, reaching 144.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012, up 44.7% year-over-year. This quarter also saw the top two smartphone vendors, Apple and Samsung, raising their combined share to 49.3%, up from 29.3% in the first quarter of 2011, and widening their lead over Nokia, which saw its smartphone market share drop to 9.2%.

Nokia's mobile handset sales reached 83.2 million units, down 22.7% year-over-year. “Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level. For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9% of overall sales for Samsung, as opposed to 16% for Nokia,” Gupta said.

Driven by the continued success of the iPhone 4S, Apple’s sales grew 96.2% in the first quarter. Sales in China were particularly strong. With more than 5 million units, China became the second-largest market for Apple after the US, according to Gartner. On top of the sales through official carriers’ channels, there was an increase in transshipments from Hong Kong, where volume has been growing over the past few quarters to reach a sell-in of more than 3 million units.

RIM sold 9.9 million mobile handsets in the first quarter of 2012, with its global share declining to 2.4% as competition increased in its international market strongholds.

In the smartphone OS market, Android accounted for more than half of all smartphone sales (56.1%) in the first quarter of 2012.