Research In Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry continues to charm the mobile subscribers desirous to have a smart phone. Gartner’s latest global survey for Q2 sales of smart phones reveals that RIM doubled its market share to 17.4 percent on a yearly basis as it sold 5.6 million phones in the April-June period as compared to 2.5 million sold last year during the same period.

"RIM continued to execute well at the consumer level, increasing its global market reach," said Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza. "In the second half of the year, the company is expected to launch smartphones based on new (designs) ... which are necessary to keep pace with the competition at the consumer level," she added.

The market was dominated by Nokia’s Oyj with sales of 15.3 million handsets but the company witnessed a decline in market share which now stands at 47.5 percent as compared to 50.8 percent a year ago.

Gartner cautioned Nokia to introduce more design variations among its N-series multimedia phones to stay ahead instead of just tweaking its N-series line up.

HTC performed well with sales more than doubling on a yearly basis and the company surging to number 3 rank as compared to number 7 rank last year.

Gartner said global smartphone sales growth almost halved from the first quarter to 15.7 percent. "The current economic environment continues to negatively impact the market, limiting consumer spending and replacement purchases in general," said Cozza but added that the outlook for sales may change in Q3 due to wider availability of new touch smartphone models and introduction of Apple’s iPhone 3G.

In smartphone operating systems, Symbian lost market share as the Japanese market declined and Mitsubishi exited the market. Symbian had 57 percent of the market in the second quarter, compared with 66 percent in the same period last year. RIM had 17.4 percent of the market and Microsoft''s Windows Mobile market share stood at 12 percent in the quarter.