Thanks for reading CrunchGear, fans, but the time has come for us to pull the plug. Maybe. See, we cover a lot of cellphones, along with Greg over at MobileCrunch, and they’re sort of our bread and butter. But according to the NPD group, an analyst group, cellphones took their first decline in sales in the US market, down 22% in the first quarter of this year.

This has never happened in the US before, it’s always been considered to be a fool-proof market. We think that the transition from regular cellphones to fancy phones with iPhone or Ocean-like capabilities might be partially responsible.

As high-end features become more commonplace, many purchasers are likely holding off on new handsets till they can get the features they want at a price they can afford. Will that happen this year? We don’t know, but we see another revolution in cellphones coming in the next year that could revitalize the now declining market.