An enterprising reader of Engadget put together a nifty little chart showing how fast a handful of smartphones hit the 1 million mark. The figures used are those based on actual announced sales by the companies involved. Those included are the Apple iPhone and iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Storm, the HTC G1, and the Nokia 5800. Also, it looks like 2008 saw 1.21 billion mobile phones sold.According to official reports by AT&T/Apple, Verizon/RIM, T-Mobile/HTC and Nokia, the breakdown is as follows:

• The iPhone 3G sold 1 million units in three days.
• The Nokia 5800 sold 1 million units in 57 days.
• The HTC G1 Android phone sold 1 million units in 61 days.
• The BlackBerry Storm sold 1 million units in 72 days.
• And the original iPhone sold 1 million units in 74 days.

There are some caveats to these figures, as pointed out by Engadget. The iPhone 3G launched in 21 different countries around the world all at once. That gave it a serious edge against the competition. In comparison, the HTC G1 was only available for sale in the United States at launch. The Nokia 5800 was for sale in a handful of European countries, and still isn't for sale in the United States yet (at least the official North American variant). The BlackBerry Storm was launched in the U.S. and the U.K. via Vodafone. The original iPhone was only available in the United States for about the first five months that it was in the market.

Even so, the iPhone 3G clearly smashes the others in turns of reaching the "million units sold" first.

Additionally, ABI Research released what it says are the full year 2008 rankings for phone sales. The entire market saw an increase to 1.21 billion mobile phones sold in total. Smartphones represented 171 million of that total.

ABI says the official handset vendors' market shares rank as follows: Nokia, 38.6%; Samsung, 16.2%; LG, 8.3%; Motorola, 8.3%; Sony Ericsson 8.0%, RIM 1.9%, Kyocera 1.4%, Apple 1.1%, HTC 1.1%, Sharp, 1.0%; and the rest of the vendors making up the remaining 14%.