Market research firm has published its latest numbers on smartphone sales. In the last quarter of 2008, sales reach 38.1 million units, an increase of 3.7 percent over the same quarter in 2007. Overall 2008 sales increased 13.9 percent over 2007 with a total of 139.3 smartphones being sold. While the economic downturn hit smartphone sales hard, they are one of the few market segments to still show growth.
For the fourth quarter of 2008, and in terms of device manufacturers, Nokia remained in first position but recorded a 16.8 percent market share drop. Research in Motion took second place, growing its market share by 84.9 percent. Apple followed in third, with an impressive market share growth. HTC and Samsung completed the top 5.
For the entire 2008 year, the top five were Nokia, Research In Motion, Apple, HTC and Sharp. The strongest performances were from Apple, Research In Motion and HTC.
In terms of mobile operating systems in Q4 2008 and for the entire year, Symbian took top spot, followed by Research in Motion, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X and Linux.