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The bad news for the mobile-device industry is that its sales in the first quarter were horrible. The good news is that smartphone sales are showing strength.

Those are some of the takeaways from a report by industry researcher Gartner released Wednesday. The report indicated that worldwide mobile-phone sales in the first quarter of this year were down 8.6 percent to 269.1 million units compared to the same quarter last year. But smartphone sales, which were 13.5 percent of all mobile-device sales, were up 12.7 percent.

Charles Emnett recently took a leap of technological faith -- he left his laptop at home on a business trip.

The health care consultant from Spring Hill, Fla., now uses his Treo smartphone to manage e-mail and calls, and handle basic document and spreadsheet work. He loads files that he needs on a flash drive that can be plugged into a PC at a client's office or the hotel business center.