Nokia Corp.'s (NOK) share of the global handset market saw a decline last year as estimated by research firm Gartner. Google Inc.'s (GOOG) the company’s overall handset sales to end users saw an increasing 1.6 billion unit sales with 32% more in 2010 said Gartner.

It further indicated that with sales of Android-based phones alone reaching almost ten-fold to 67 million units, the total smartphone sales went up to 297 million, units which shot up 72% from as compared to the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of the 2009, Nokia’s total handset market share was 36.6% and this declined to 27.1% in the last quarter alone, while for the full year the share dropped from 36.4% in 2009 to 28.9%.

Following the estimates from research firm Canalys last week that Android had toppled Nokia Corp.'s (NOK) Symbian as the world’s most favorite and widespread these figures now show the actual decline.

But Gartner still estimated that owing to the combined Symbian sales of Nokia and smaller handset vendors like Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd. and Sharp Corp. that kept unit productions ahead, Symbian continued to be slightly ahead of Android in the final quarter.

However it is clear that Nokia has come under severe pressure as the Android has seen a quick growth. While Symbian has for long remained the market leader the estimates highlights the threat and bigger hurdles ahead of the Finnish company to reclaim its market dominance.