Every hour as many as 10,000 mobile phones are sold in India, thanks to the ever-increasing mobile services market and availability of entry level handsets that has brought phones well within everyone's reach, an IDC India report said.

India has shipped close to 85 million mobile handsets between April 2007 and March 2008, compared to under 66 million units shipped in the previous fiscal, registering an year-on-year growth of around 29 per cent.

In the last quarter of the financial year FY 2008, country's shipment has touched 22.3 million which amounts to around 10,000 phones every hour, stated IDC which tracks the Indian telecom industry.

It is up 24.4 per cent from 17.9 million units in the corresponding period of the previous year.

IDC India Country Manager Kapil Dev Singh said: "This growth comes on the back of a burgeoning mobile services market and lower entry barriers across various customer categories, as average selling values (ASVs) of handsets continue to fall in the wake of a highly competitive landscape populated by close to 25 vendors."

The year also saw growing number of high-end phones being shipped to India as EDGE and WCDMA-enabled mobile phones contributed 15.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent of the total mobile phone shipments in FY 2008 compared to 7.4 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively, in 2006-07.

In India, overall, Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia has the largest market share, of 52.8 per cent, followed by LG at 10.2 per cent and Samsung at 8.3 per cent in terms of units shipped during the quarter ended March 31, 2008, IDC said.