The technology research firm Gartner has reported that a total of 1.21 billion mobile phones have been sold in 2009, globally, depicting a fall of 0.9% from the previous year.

However, the fourth quarter of 2009 reported a rise of 8.3%, compared with that of 2008.

"People are being a little less careful than at the end of last year, and there is a bigger variety of phones on the market to tempt them" said Carolina Milanesi, an Analyst at Gartner.

While Nokia emerged as the biggest handset-seller for the year with a 36.4% market share, Samsung secured the second position, followed by LG.

But the year didn't remain beneficial for Sony Ericsson and Motorola, who fell to 4.5% and 4.8% , respectively.

Among the smartphone-sellers, Symbian maintained to be the at the top with its market shares at 46.9%, followed by RIM and Apple, with 19.9% and 14.4% global market shares, respectively.

"There were only a couple of million differences in unit sales between Motorola and RIM in the fourth quarter. Motorola is not too far from being overtaken", said Ms Milanesi said.