Also Wednesday the finance chief of chip maker Texas Instruments Inc. cited a subdued mobile market and Ehud Gelblum of JP Morgan cut his forecast for the third-quarter and fourth-quarter handset market.

Qualcomm, the No. 1 maker of cellphone chips, saw its shares fall 3 percent while cellphone market leader Nokia's stock fell 4.5 percent and TI shares fell 4.3 percent. Shares in Research In Motion fell 3.5 percent as investors worried that cellphone demand would fall short of expectations for the holiday shopping season.

"We're seeing some evidence there's a lengthening of replacement cycles," Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said in a morning interview with cable television network CNBC.

Jacobs said consumers appeared to be holding onto phones longer in developed markets such as Japan and South Korea, adding that consumers tended to keep the same phone anywhere from a year to two years, depending on the region.

Jefferies & Co. analyst Bill Choi said the comment, which he believes could also be applied to the United States, fueled worries among investors who are already anxious to know whether phone demand would meet the typically high expectations for the upcoming holiday shopping period.

"People are nervous about what happens to handset demand," Choi said. "That probably got stirred up by the Qualcomm comments."

If demand is weak, companies now ramping up production for a busy season could be left with phone inventories, he said.

Gelblum said in a research note that he was cutting his expectation for current quarter handset sales to 303 million units from 310 million units and cut his estimate for fourth-quarter sales to 345 million from 355 million.

Gelblum cited weakness at No. 2 phone maker Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and LG Electronics and said weakness is likely to be most pronounced in mid-to-lower tier phones compared with more expensive devices.

The new forecast means the global market grows at 9.5 percent this year instead of Gelbum's previous estimate for 10.1 percent, he said. Nokia had recently raised its estimate for the global mobile market to 10 percent or more.

Kevin March, CFO of TI, which lost its No. 1 ranking in cellphone chips to Qualcomm last year, cited an uninspiring and subdued wireless market in an investor conference webcast.

But he said TI was continuing progress toward its gross profit margin target of 55 percent and its operating margin target of 30 percent, helped by its analog chip business.

Nokia's U.S. shares were down $1.10, or 4.5 percent at $23.35 on the New York Stock Exchange where TI was off $1.08 or 4.38 percent at $23.36. RIM shares were down $5.19 or 4.3 percent at $113.16 on Nasdaq.

Qualcomm, which provides cellphone chips and technology licenses, saw its shares fall $2.18 or more than 4 percent to $48.99 on Nasdaq.

Motorola was off 10 cents at $9.41 on the NYSE and smaller rival Palm Inc. was down 17 cents, or 2 percent, at $8.28 on Nasdaq.