U.S. cellphone sales dive, especially for Motorola

Filed under: Bad news, Industry, Motorola (MOT)

With all of the success of the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone and the RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry, investors would think cellphone sales in the U.S. are booming. That assumption is wrong.

In the second quarter, handset sales in the U.S. fell 13% according to NPD Group, dropping to 28 million units. According to The Wall Street Journal, "That is the lowest number of phones sold in a quarter since NPD began tracking the category in 2005."

Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) market share fell from 32% last year to 21% in the second quarter this year.

The news shows the extent to which handset companies will have to rely on sales in emerging markets like China if they are going to continue to growing. Although recent figures for Europe are hard to come by, it is likely that sales growth there has slowed or has gone negative. In both the U