Americans Buying Even Fewer Motorola RAZRs

You wouldn’t know it from the iPhone lines at Apple (AAPL) stores across the nation, but cellphone sales in the states are slowing. A report Tuesday from The NPD Group reveals that U.S. sales of mobile phone handsets in the second quarter of 2008 declined about 13 percent over 2007. Clearly, Americans are buying fewer cellphones.

More specifically, they’re buying fewer Motorola (MOT) phones. The company saw its share of the handset market fall to 21 percent from 32 percent a year ago. And that 11 percent loss was the competition’s gain. “Quarterly unit-sales of handsets fell to their lowest level since NPD begin tracking the category in 2005,” Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, said in a statement. “Even so, most major manufacturers picked up market share that was lost by Motorola.” And that’s left the market in a bit of a three-way tie. Samsung and LG each have 20 percent share to Motorola’s 21 percent. Bringing up the rear: Nokia (NOK) and RIM (RIM) with 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.

A few other data points worth noting: Consumers who actually bought handsets in the quarter paid an average of $84 for them. Of those handsets, 81 percent were Bluetooth-enabled, compared with 69 percent last year. And 65 percent were music-enabled, compared with only 45 percent last year. Finally, sales of handsets with a QWERTY keyboard rose to 28 percent from 12 percent. So while Americans may be purchasing few cellphones, the ones they are buying are more feature-rich and more expensive.