Smartphone wizards Research in Motion and Apple have seen increases in market share - at the expense of rival manufacturer Nokia. While the Finnish mobile giant is still top dog when it comes to mobile phone and smartphone sales, there's no doubt Nokia won't be too pleased with the market changes.

Apple shot to stardom with its first iPhone, but sales really began to shoot upwards with the release of the iPhone 3G last year, with one million units being snapped up over its first three days of release. Similarly, Research in Motion has seen constant interest in its BlackBerry smartphones, which are hailed as the handset to have when it comes to business-oriented mobile phones.

In Q4 last year, both RIM and Apple saw their market shares double, with Canadian RIM jumping from 10.9 per cent to 19.5 per cent and American Apple notching up from 5.2 per cent to 10.7 per cent.

 Unfortunately for Nokia, these increases meant that someone had to lose out - and the Finnish firm lost a fifth of its market share, slipping from 50.9 per cent to 40.8 per cent, meaning that it no longer controls over half of the market.

However, it's still early days for mobile developers to pull out all the stops in 2009 - and Nokia could find itself clawing back up through the smartphone stakes. The introduction of Google's much-hyped Android software, an operating system that Apple and RIM (who use their own platforms) can't take advantage of, could give Nokia an added boost.