Around 315 million mobile phones were sold globally in the fourth quarter of 2008, a decline of 5 percent year-on-year according to Gartner. That’s not a great figure, but it’s not as low as that produced by IDC which said that sales fell by 12.6 percent year-on-year to 289 million units. There was also a difference in full year sales, with Gartner estimating a 6 percent year-on-year increase to 1.22 billion units, while IDC saw an increase of only 3.5 percent year-on-year to 1.18 billion. The one thing that’s agreed on is that the lower sales resulted in increased inventory, which will have to be reduced… “Mobile devices in both emerging and developed markets experienced the lowest quarter-on-quarter growth (2 percent ) ever recorded in a fourth quarter,” said Gartner mobile device research director Carolina Milanesi. “Efforts to reduce inventory will intensify in the first quarter of 2009 and continue into the second quarter of 2009,” reports Dow Jones.

SEE ALSO: Report: Cellphone Shipments Drop 10 Percent In Q4; Nokia Down, Samsung Up

NPD Group has also released some figures, this showing a sharp uptick in the sales of smartphones—at least in the US. In Q4 2008 sales of smartphones to US consumers represented 23 percent of all handset sales, compared to 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that the average price for a smartphone fell 23 percent, from $216 in Q407 to $167 in Q408. Half of the smartphones sold had touch screens and 70 percent had QWERTY keyboards—indicating that about 20 percent had both. Connectivity also increased, with 66 percent of smartphones sold running on 3G networks compared to 46 percent a year earlier. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) sold the most smartphones in the quarter, followed by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), HTC, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) and Samsung.