The mobile device market in Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA) grew 125 percent in the first quarter of 2003 compared with the year-ago quarter, according to new research from Canalys.

The company said that new smartphones and Pocket PCs from vendors such as Dell and ViewSonic were largely responsible for the growth. Canalys predicts that shipments of smartphones will exceed those of handhelds in 2003.

Nokia was the overall market leader, with a 42 percent share. Palm was the highest-ranked handheld vendor with a 15 percent market share. Sony Ericsson (12 percent), Hewlett-Packard (11 percent) and Orange (4 percent) rounded out the top five.

There was also some good news for Microsoft in that the Windows CE share of the mobile device market was higher than that for Palm OS for the first time. Canalys expects Palm's introduction of new models this week to help boost its shipments in the coming quarter, but it continues to face an increasing number of competitors and competing device formats.

Dell was one of the new entrants in the first quarter, taking a 2 percent share of the overall EMEA mobile device market with its Axim handhelds.