Market researcher IDC announced that mobile phone sales topped one billion for all of 2006. Handset vendors shipped a record high 294.9 million mobile phones (20% more than last year) in the last quarter resulting in a year total of 1.02 billion compared to 832.8 million wireless handsets sold in 2005. Nations in emerging market areas of Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America accounted for a higher portion of mobile phone purchases last year than mature areas such as the North America, Japan and Western Europe.