Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from Jeff Fidacaro of Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.
Jeff Fidacaro - Merrill Lynch
Good morning. I was wondering if you could just touch a little bit on the softness you see in the business demand, maybe across regions and verticals. I noticed especially in Europe you had a little bit of an offset by the distribution fire. I was just wondering if you could talk about regions and then if you could break it down between inkjet and laser.
Paul J. Curlander
The primary softness that we saw in the first quarter was in the U.S. and it was in the enterprise segment to begin with, and we saw some softness there certainly in the federal government, state and local government, retail, financial services. I would also tell you that the consumer market in the U.S. in the first quarter overall was pretty weak. As we look at the data that’s available to us out of January and February, we see things like the units, you know, total market units down about 11%, total market hardware revenue down about 14%. So pretty weak in the U.S., I would say both enterprise and consumer. SMB in the U.S. actually looked pretty good during the first quarter, so really just enterprise and consumer.
If we looked at Europe, we saw some selected softness in the business market primarily for us in the U.K. and Italy. In Italy, some of the government spending was a primary issue. The U.K., a very competitive market so it’s hard for us to say much beyond that, other than we saw some softness there.
In Europe, it’s very hard for us to comment on the consumer market. I think overall the consumer market, and inkjet has been somewhat flat over the last year. It probably was roughly that in the quarter. Our main issue in Europe was the disruption from the distribution center fire.
As we look in the other geographies, overall we see good business market demand across all the other geographies. We saw good hardware revenue growth across those geographies in the business segment.
On the consumer side, of course with our strategy, we are pulling back across all of our geographies so that’s impacting Lexmark uniquely. I wouldn’t say there was a market impact per se.
Jeff Fidacaro - Merrill Lynch
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Min Park of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. We’ll move on. Our next question is coming from Bill Hand of Bear Stearns. Please go ahead.
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