Samsung has announced today that it managed to sell over 10 million touchscreen handsets around the world last year. Considering the fact that Strategy Analytics announced that a total of 37 million touch phones had been sold during the past twelve months, Samsung accounts for a great percentage of the units shipped.

According to the manufacturer, 1.12 million handsets, out of the total 10 million touchscreen devices sold, were shipped in South Korea, while China accounted for 0.9 million units. More than 4 million touch phones were sold in Europe, while 2.2 million went to the United States.

Undoubtedly, mobile phones sold like hot cakes in 2008, which was one of the best years for the industry. There are many voices that hope this year would be as good as the last one, and that more high-end touchscreen Symbian phones will surface, yet analysts have predicted that it would be a rather flat or negative one, at least in the first half of the year. Hopefully, smartphones will manage to impress customers as they managed to do last year, and the market will see better growth.

Samsung's announcement comes a day after LG Electronics said in a statement that it had sold over 5 million units of its Viewty camera phone in only 14 months since the device was released on the market. According to LG, 350,000 units have been shipped in South Korea, the company's homeland, while around 4,650,000 devices went to users from the rest of the world, mainly in Asia and Europe.

Since the device has seen such great addiction, the phone maker has released the KC910 Renoir, which is expected to have a similar success. The phone might have a great chance, given the fact that it comes with an 8-megapixel camera, yet it is still too soon to make an accurate projection.