Monday, May 19,2008 @ 1:40pm
Phone sales decline, BlackBerry makes gains
A failing economy is beginning to have serious impact on the US cellphone market, says the NPD Group. For the first time since it began recording such figures, NPD writes that sales dropped in the first quarter of 2008 to 31 million, a decline of 22 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. There has also been a substantial shift in marketshare, with Chicago-based Motorola continuing to dominate other companies, but slipping from a control of 35 percent to 27.
Notable is that smartphones claimed a larger portion of sales at 17 percent, versus just 7 in Q1 2007. This in turn contributed to increased success for Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry phones pushed it into the top five of manufacturers at 5 percent, displacing Sanyo. Samsung, LG and Nokia took the middle positions in the list; Apple and the iPhone, despite considerable publicity, did not rank.