Most Americans buy new mobile phones because they want a new one, not because something was wrong with the last one so it would make sense that in a down economy, mobile phone sales would be down as well. This isn’t the case for smartphones, however.

Smartphones saw a 10% increase in sales over the same period last year and account for 17% of the total market. This trend is due partly to the success of the BlackBerry. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has moved into the top 5 for handset manufacturers moving Sanyo out of the the fifth spot with about 5% of the market.