Ah yes, I always leap upon new official figures from Canalys - kind of like tuning into radio chart shows to find out which song is 'number 1'. 118 million smartphones were sold across the world in 2007, but who were the winners and losers? Read on to find out.

Of the annual figures, Nokia shipped over 60 million of the 118 million total, with just over half the market, with RIM in second place on 12 million, with noone else (including HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson) even getting close. In terms of OS, Symbian OS powered 67% of all smartphones sold during the year, with Microsoft's Windows Mobile on 13% and RIM's Blackberry on 10%.

Looking more specifically at the stats from Q4:

I can see that the smartphone market is still growing very healthily, as expected, 72% year on year, I'd expect to be near the 200 million smartphones sold in 2008 mark in 11 months time. Nokia's market share has held pretty steady too, showing that S60 and Symbian OS are still working out very well for them(!)

Apple, perhaps not surprisingly, made a strong entrance to the worldwide market at the end of last year. To get to 6% so quickly (and with a single product) is an impressive achievement. RIM's OS continues to improve at a rate of knots (see my Smartphones Show Blackberry slots, for example) and it continues to be a surprise how fragmented the Windows Mobile world is, in terms of manufacturer success. Plus, even in their home territory of North America, Microsoft is now down to 3rd place in terms of their mobile platform (after RIM and Apple). If Microsoft don't pull a cat out of the bag very, very soon then their in big trouble.

Also disappointing is Sony Ericsson's market share for their UIQ 3 smartphones. Even in the EMEA region, they ranked below number 5, with less than 2 million device shipments during the quarter.

Read more detail and analysis in the official Canalys report.