Gartner has released its mobile phone market share report for Q1 2009. Worldwide mobile phone sales dropped 8.6 percent from 294 million in Q1 2008 to 269 million in Q1 2009. However, smartphone sales saw a 12.7 percent increase from 32 million in Q1 2008 to 36 million in Q1 2009. Smartphones represented 13.5 percent of total mobile market, which was again higher than 11 percent in Q1 2008.

The top three of the smartphone market were Nokia, RIM and Apple. Nokia saw a drop in market share from 45.1 percent (14.5 million units) in Q1 2008 to 41.2 percent (14.9 million units) in Q1 2009. On the other hand, RIM and Apple saw increase in their market shares. RIM had 13.3 percent market with sales of 4.3 million in Q1 2008, which increased to 19.9 percent with sales of 7.2 million devices in Q1 2009. Apple more than doubled its market share from 5.3 percent (1.7 million units) to 10.8 percent with sales of 3.9 million units in Q1 2009.

“Much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products, both in midtier and high-end devices,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. “’Touch for the sake of touch’ was enough of a driver in the midtier space, but tighter integration with applications and services around music, mobile e-mail, and Internet browsing made the difference at the high end of the market.”

It will be interesting to see smartphone market share data in Q3 2009, as it will show whether Palm Pre made any difference in smartphone market share after being on sale for one full quarter.
[Via Gartner]