Year 2009 saw no change in the market for mobile handsets in India. It saw sales of 101.54 million units, said a report from IDC, a research firm.

The reason for this flat growth is the fall in sales in the first six months of the last year, starting from January.

Just like the last year, Nokia, the Finnish handset maker was able to maintain its leadership position. It has 54.1 per cent of the market share in terms of total units sold. It was followed by Korea's Samsung and LG. They captured a market of 9.1 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively.

Interestingly, many new entrants were seen in the market. The number of such new debutants increased to 28. They in total grabbed 17.5 per cent of the total sales that happened in the segment. This is totally against the trend, where only five vendors were seen in the market in Jan-March period of 2008. They had managed to sell only 0.9 per cent of the total sales.

After showing a bad performance, the handset market was able to revive in Q4, 2009. It went up by 2.3 per cent to reach 28.36 million units.