OYSTER BAY, NY -- An estimated 405 million handsets, including 197 million smartphones, were shipped in the first quarter, according to market research firm ABI Research.

Smartphone shipments grew 38% year-over-year while feature phone shipments declined 5.2% year-over-year. Shipments of all handsets grew 12% YoY in the first quarter thanks to the continued strength of the smartphone market, which achieved an all-time high of 49% shipment penetration.

"Worldwide handset and smartphone shipments exhibited classic first quarter softness,” says senior analyst Michael Morgan. “Samsung accomplished strong smartphone growth while Apple dismissed a troubling mix of slowed growth and declining margins as a sign that the older iPhone 4S was in high demand.”

Nokia handset shipments plummeted to 62 million with smartphone shipments at a 5-year low of 6.1 million. Considering market and OEM specific conditions, BlackBerry (RIM) delivered a respectable 6 million shipments, with 1 million coming from the launch of BlackBerry 10-based devices. Despite HTC’s well-designed ONE devices, shipments continued to decline 37% year-over-year to 4.8 million. LG continued its revival with 10.3 million smartphone shipments and 16.2 million handset shipments.

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