The first quarter is routinely slower after the holiday season. The drop for 2009 was sharper than most years.

ABI Research practice director Kevin Burden said, “The 255.6 million handsets shipped represented a 20% decline from Q4 2008, which was already a down quarter, and a nearly 12% decline from Q1 2008.”

The experts in the market believe this could be a new trend with consumers going into protection mode. Manufacturers are producing less and retail outlets are having smaller inventories as the industry begins to protect itself during the decline trend. The worst hit is expected to be the Asia/Pacific region where handset volumes are triple that of the next largest area. Latin America has had almost a 28% decline in shipments, which is the largest decline of any one region. In the U.S., according to Gartner, cellphone sales dropped nearly 9% in Q1. The only silver lining in this cloud is Apple. The iPhone 3G doubled its market share in the first quarter compared to the first quarter last year. It shipped 3.9 million iPhones for a market share of 10.8 percent. The latest global handset shipment data was provided by ABI Research's “Mobile Devices Market Forecast Analysis.”