Nokia today released its results for the first quarter of 2008 and it doesn’t look very convincing. The global leader saw a complete percentage shaved off from its 40 percent global market share last quarter.

While the year on year results for the company’s devices and services unit shows a healthy 27 percent growth, it is the sequential quarterly decrease of 13 percent that will give some people a few sleepless nights. 

What’s more, Nokia’s mobile devices shipments to North America and Europe declined by a whopping 49 percent and 30.9 percent respectively since the last quarter of 2007! The only region to show an increase in shipments during the two consecutive quarters was Asia-Pacific, which saw 34.1 million devices shipped during this quarter, 0.1 million more than the preceding quarter.

There are no doubts that Nokia’s plans to increase its market share in North America after Motorola’s poor performance have taken a hit, thanks to the roaring success of Apple’s iPhone in the US. It’d be early to say that the iPhone could have eaten into Nokia’s market share in Europe as well, but it won’t be surprising if it actually did. With Apple introducing the iPhone in more countries this summer and a high probability of an Asia launch in June, it’d be interesting to see how it affects Nokia’s performance.

For now Nokia is suggesting that it is an annual trend and the device volumes will go up slightly in the second quarter, like they did in the second quarter of 2007.