The recent slowdown in the global mobile market caused North American smartphone shipments to drop by 18% this past quarter, according to a study released today.

Research firm Canalys.com Ltd., which produced the report, said that it’s the biggest year-over-year decline it has ever recorded.

The company’s data shows that weak demand pulled down first-quarter phone sales to a five-year low of 36.4 million units. That’s a big fall from the record high of 44.4 million units its researchers logged in the first quarter of 2018.

As the leading player in the North American handset market, Apple Inc. was hit hardest by the downturn. The company shipped 14.6 million iPhones, 3.1 million less than the prior year, but that was still enough for it to close the first quarter with a 40% share of total sales.

“There was a disconnect between channel orders and consumer demand, which then caused early shipments in Q1 to be challenging for Apple,” Canalys research analyst Vincent Thielke wrote. “But moving into March, we did see an uptick in iPhone XR shipments, an early sign that these challenges may be starting to ease at home.”

That could also be good news for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., the second largest phone maker in North America. The company fared the best among the top five manufacturers on Canalys’ ranking thanks to robust demand for its Galaxy S10 flagship. Samsung shipped 10.7 million handsets in the first quarter, up slightly from 10.3 million in the first three months of 2018, and raised its market share to 29%.

Yet the strong performance of the S10 wasn’t enough to shield the company’s bottom line from the slowdown in the broader industry. Samsung, which makes much of its revenue from supplying components to other handset makers, saw operating profits fall a massive 60%. Samsung’s mobile business reported a smaller but still significant 40% drop. 

According to Canalys, LG Corp. took third place behind Apple and Samsung in the first quarter with 4.8 million units sold. Lenovo Group Ltd. followed with 2.1 million phone shipments and Chinese electronics maker TCL Corp. rounded out the top five with 1.4 million under its belt.

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