The Asia-Pacific region grew 6.4 percent year-on-year in Q1 mobile phone sales, the only region in the world to register growth, according to Gartner.
Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled nearly 426 million units this period, only a slight increase of 0.7 percent from the same period last year. Worldwide smartphone sales hit 210 million units in the first quarter of 2013, up 42.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012.
“More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia-Pacific in the first quarter of 2013, which helped the region increase its share of global mobile phones to 53.1 percent year-on-year,” said Anshul Gupta, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. “In addition, China saw its mobile phone sales increase 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013, and its sales represented 25.7 percent of global mobile phone sales, up nearly 2 percentage points year-on-year.

Worldwide tablet shipments continue to surge, growing 142.4 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), according to preliminary data from IDC
Samsung led the smartphone market as smartphones outshipped feature phones for the first time in Q1. According to IDC (see table below), Samsung not only maintained its pole position but widened its market share lead over Apple in the smartphone market.