SAN JOSE, Calif.—Worldwide mobile phone unit sales reached 93.8 million units in the first quarter of 2002, a 3.8-percent decline from first-quarter 2001, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Inc.
Nokia Corp. experienced a slight decline in global sales to end users compared with the same quarter last year. Nokia did, however, register a slight increase in market share vs. the same quarter in 2001, despite very weak market conditions in some of its core markets.
Gartner Dataquest said Motorola Inc.’s market share position continued to grow strongly in the first quarter of 2002, thanks to its continued dominance of the Chinese mobile terminal market and its strength in CDMA markets worldwide. Samsung and Siemens AG experienced the strongest increase in sales, with growth rates of 48.6 percent and 24.1 percent, respectively, during the quarter.
“Samsung’s spectacular growth is a reflection of its ongoing success in delivering compelling products across multiple technologies in disparate markets,” said Bryan Prohm, senior analyst with the Mobile Communications Worldwide research group for Gartner Dataquest. “Siemens, meanwhile, continued to build on the success it achieved during the latter half of 2001, and it is positioned to make a competitive push in the North American and Latin American GSM markets in 2002.”
