A new research survey has revealed that the worldwide mobile phone sales to end-users registered an 8.3-percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2008, although total sales in 2009 declined by 0.9 percent.

According to analyst firm Gartner, mobile phone market sales in Q4 accounted 340 million of the entire 1.211 billion units sold in the whole of 2009.

“The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices,” Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

Smartphone sales to end-users continued their strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, totaling 53.8 million units, up 41.1 percent from the same period in 2008.

In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8-percent increase from 2008. Smartphone-focused vendors like Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) successfully captured market share from other larger device producers, controlling 14.4 and 19.9 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, respectively, Gartner said.

Three of the top five mobile phone vendors experienced a decline in sales in 2009, the research firm noted. The top five vendors continued to lose market share to Apple and other vendors, with their combined share dropping from 79.7 in 2008 to 75.3 percent in 2009.

In 2009, Nokia's annual mobile phone sales to end-users reached 441 million units, a 2.2-percent drop in market share from 2008. Although Nokia outperformed industry expectations in sales and revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, its declining smartphone ASP showed that it continues to face challenges from other smartphone vendors, Gartner said.

“Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010,” said Milanesi.

Samsung was the clear winner among the top five with market share growing by 3.2 percentage points from 2008. For 2010, the company is putting a focus on Bada, its new operating system (OS) that aims at adding the value of an ecosystem to its successful hardware lineup.

Motorola sold slightly more than half of its 2008 sales and exhibited the sharpest drop in market share, accounting for 4.8 percent market share in 2009.

In the smartphone OS market, Symbian continued its lead, but its share dropped 5.4 percentage points in 2009, Gartner said. Competitive pressure from its competitors, such as RIM and Apple, and the continued weakness of Nokia’s high-end device sales have negatively impacted Symbian’s share, it added.

“Symbian had become uncompetitive in recent years, but its market share, particularly on Nokia devices, is still strong. If Symbian can use this momentum, it could return to positive growth,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

The two best performers in 2009 were Android and Apple. Android increased its market share by 3.5 percentage points in 2009, while Apple’s share grew by 6.2 percentage points from 2008, which helped it move to the No. 3 position and displace Microsoft Windows Mobile.