Canalys reports the worldwide market for what the research firm labels smart mobile devices (handhelds, wireless handhelds and smartphones) grew by 55 per cent during the first quarter of 2006 compared to the same period a year ago, with 16.7 million units shipped worldwide.

Nokia increased its global smart mobile device lead to 54 percent from 50 percent a year earlier - with 5,394,900 million devices sold - while Research In Motion overtook Palm, Inc. globally and in the U.S. for the first time.

Although Palm slipped to third in worldwide rankings with 6.2 percent of the market, while RIM commanded a 8.4 percent share, bringing it up to a distant second, the former number two posted slight growth thanks to a 44 percent increase in Treo smartphone shipments; which was offset by deep declines in handheld sales, according to Canalys, part of a larger downward trend in PDAs.

Globally, the handheld segment slipped 25 percent, with the top four players in the PDA arena - Palm (28.2 percent), HP (21.9 percent), Dell (9 percent) and Acer (7.7 percent) - all seeing year-on-year falls. The only leading handheld vendor to post growth was fifth-place Mio Technology, up 7 percent. In total, 2,122,460 handhelds were shipped.

Smartphones
Converged devices (smartphones and cellular-enabled handhelds) continue to drive the smart mobile device market forward, with 75 percent year-over-year growth. The status quo, platform-wise, maintained, with Symbian's global smart mobile device dominance growing and not shrinking - as some indicated might begin to happen - hitting a new high of 69 percent (up from 61.4 percent), followed by Microsoft's mobile platforms with 12 percent.

The Diffusion Group predicted that Microsoft - along with Linux - would overtake Symbian in a couple of years. While Windows Mobile has performed remarkably well in the marketplace since the release of version 5.0 last May, it'll have to do even better to meet those expectations.

Japanese vendors Mitsubishi (6.7 percent) and Sharp (6.2 percent) were new to the top five, helping to propel Symbian's numbers higher. Canalys senior analyst and research manager Rachel Lashford said, "In addition to the shipment increases made by Nokia (57 percent) and RIM (9.2 percent), Japanese vendors such as Mitsubishi and Sharp have achieved very high volumes of their new Symbian-based FOMA smart phones in Q1, catapulting them into the global top five. With increased shipments from Fujitsu (4.8 percent), and a new device from Sony Ericsson, Symbian is enjoying not only significant Japanese market success, but also seeing record global market share."

8,659,920 million converged devices shipped last quarter.

Region
For the first time, the Asia-Pacific region overtook EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) in overall quarterly smart mobile device sales, representing 46 percent of all shipments compared to 39 percent for EMEA and only 15 percent for the Americas. Shipments in the more mature Western Europe market declined by 10 percent, but they grew in central and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa by 112 percent.

Canalys said that despite delays in the release of its enterprise-focused E-series, Nokia not only retained its comfortable lead in the EMEA region, but it grew its share to 76 percent from 67 percent as well. Both Nokia and second-placed RIM increased their respective device shipments above the market average of 25 percent.

Qtek (the brand used by ODM HTC in Europe) posted the highest growth among the top five vendors, 211 percent, overtaking HP and Palm for the first time and making it the leading Windows Mobile vendor in the EMEA.