Sales of mobile devices in MEA rise 16%

Dubai:  Defying signs of a global slowdown, sales of mobile devices in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) rose 16 per cent in the first quarter, fuelled a growing appetite for smartphones, while embattled Nokia Corp. remains the region's top handset vendor, according to research firm Gartner.

"I think the performance for the Middle East and Africa region has been good compared to the overall trend we are seeing," Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner told Zawya Dow Jones. "Overall [global] sales in the first quarter were down 2 per cent and that happened after 10 straight quarters of growth. If you look at MEA, the growth has been up 16 per cent year-on-year."

Driving demand in the MEA region has been the increasing popularity of smartphones, with sales of the devices surging 35 per cent in the first three months of the year, according to Gartner.

Samsung Electronics Co. is now the number one player in the smartphone space in the MEA region, after ranking fifth in the same quarter a year ago.

"They [Samsung] have done extremely well in this region and they have taken the share from other smartphone players and replaced other players like Nokia, RIM, and Apple," said Gupta.

In terms of overall mobile-handset sales however, Finland's Nokia is still the leader in MEA. "It [Nokia] is having a good share in terms of the feature phones and smartphones combined," Gartner's Gupta said. He also noted Nokia continues to perform well in emerging markets where smartphones have yet to really dominate.

"These countries smartphones sold are under 20 per cent of the overall sales, so there is a huge potential."