Figures are now in, according to IDC, for overall phones sales worldwide for Q4 2010, for all manufacturers (we're still waiting for further breakdown into smartphone stats, though see Rafe's own chart in the Nokia Q4 results story for his (usually accurate) take on this. Quotes and a table below. Summary: Nokia down 2% year-on-year, but still selling almost as many as the companies in second, third and fourth places put together, Apple slip to 5th, but still almost double Q4 sales, YoY.

The worldwide mobile phone market grew 17.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 (4Q10), a new quarterly high driven by smartphones. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 401.4 million units in 4Q10 compared to 340.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009. Vendors shipped a total of 1.39 billion units on a cumulative worldwide basis in 2010, up 18.5% from the 1.17 billion units shipped in 2009.

The strong quarterly and annual growth comes after a weak 2009, which saw the market decline by 1.6%. A stronger economy and a wider array of increasingly affordable smartphones helped lift the market to its highest annual growth rate since 2006 when it grew 22.6%.

It's not just smartphone-focused suppliers that capitalized on the mobile phone market's renewed growth last year. ZTE, a company that sells primarily lower-cost feature phones in emerging markets, moved into the number 4 position worldwide in 4Q10. It is the first quarter the Chinese handset maker finished among IDC's Top 5 vendors.

"Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year," added Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market and who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010, are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list."

Nokia's overall unit volume slipped 2.4% in the fourth quarter, which the vendor attributed to the "intense competitive" environment and component shortages. The result was lower feature phone shipments. The company did, however, grow smartphone volume by 38% compared to the same prior-year quarter. Nokia launched the C7 and the C6-01 touchscreen smartphones as well as the C3 combination touchscreen & QWERTY device in the fourth quarter. Still, smartphone ASPs dropped 16% on a year-over-year basis.

Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q4 2010 (Units in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, January 27, 2011