Apple’s iPhone along with RIM, HTC and Samsung increased their respective market share in terms of unit sales of handsets under the smartphone category.

Apple registered the highest growth rate in the segment at 245.7% with 11.417 million unit sales. Its market share surged to 8.2 % at the end of 2008 as compared to 2.7 % in 2007. For Q4, Apple managed sales of 4.079 million units at a yearly growth rate of 111.6 %.

Next to follow Apple in terms of growth rate progress was Research in Motion (RIM) at 96.7 %. It shipped 23.15 million units of its popular BlackBerry range of models. RIM saw its market share increase from 9.6% to 16.6%. Q4 saw RIM registering 7.4 million unit sales at a yearly growth of  84.9%.

The other firm to record healthy growth rate came out to be HTC at 58.5% and unit shipments totaling 5.8 million. For Q4 HTC managed 1.6 million shipments at a yearly growth rate of 19.9%.

Samsung emerged as the fastest growing manufacturer for Q4 at rate of 138% and shipments of 1.6 million.

The growth of these companies however was at the cost of market leader, Nokia. Nokia saw its market share erode from 49.4% at end of 2007 to 43.7% at end of 2008. It clocked 60.9 million unit sales. For Q4, Nokia registered a drop in sales by 16.8% as sales declined by 18.7 million units in 2007 to 15.6 million in 2008.

In the operating system space, Apple and RIM continued to rule in terms of growth rate. Symbian however registered a drop in sales by 6.1%. Palm also managed healthy growth rate of 42.2%.  WinDows Mobile managed growth rate of 12.2%.