Smartphone sales jumped 85 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2011, accounting for 23.6 per cent of the total mobile phone sales that increased 19 per cent to 427.8 million units, research firm Gartner’s latest study shows.

Google’s Android operating system outshined its rivals in the platform race. Android’s market share jumped 9.6 per cent to 36 per cent, while the market share of Nokia’s Symbian slipped from 44.2 per cent to 27.4 per cent.

Cupertino-based electronics giant Apple sold 16.9 million units of its iOS-based iPhones, pushing sales to more than double from the first quarter of last year. This helped the iOS platform increase its market share from 2.3 per cent to 3.9 per cent.

Canadian manufacturer Research in Motion’s sales jumped from 10.8 million to 13 million, but its market share remained at 3.

LG Electronics sold 24 million phones, which gave it a 5.6 per cent market share, compared to 27.2 million and 7.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2010.

Samsung remained the second largest phone manufacturer in the world, with sales of 68.8 million units, but its market share slipped by around 2 percentage points to 16.1 per cent.

Windows Phone could report sales of only 1.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011, while ZTE sold 9.8 million phones, grabbing a market share of 2.3 per cent.

Nokia, which recently partnered with software giant Microsoft by agreeing to use its Windows OS in its future smartphones, is still the leading phone manufacturer. It sold 107.6 million phones during the first quarter, but its market share slipped from 30.6 per cent to 25.1 per cent, the lowest point since 1997.