The worldwide mobile phone market grew 4 per cent year over year in the seasonally slow first quarter of 2013 as smartphones outshipped feature phones for the first time. According to the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker published by IDC, vendors shipped a total of 418.6 million mobile phones in the first quarter, compared with 402.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012 and 483.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012. In the worldwide smartphone market, vendors shipped 216.2 million units in the first quarter, which marked the first time that more than half (51.6 per cent) the total phone shipments in a quarter were smartphones. The market grew 41.6 per cent compared to the 152.7 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2012, but was 5.1 per cent lower than the 227.8 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of last year. Release