The worldwide mobile phone market remained weak in the second quarter despite some encouraging signs in smartphone shipments, market researcher IDC said Thursday.

Mobile phone shipments fell 10.8 percent year-on-year in the second quarter to 269.6 million units, IDC said, noting the figure was an improvement over the first quarter. IDC revised down its first quarter handset shipment figure to a 17.2 percent year-on-year decline, from a 15.8 percent drop in its previous report.

“The challenges from the previous nine months – aggressive channel destocking, foreign exchange volatility, and uncertain demand – continued to plague the mobile phone market, but were not as severe as before,” says Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement. Small signs of improvement centered around increased demand for high-end handsets, such as smartphones.

IDC predicts the global handset market will decline 13 percent in 2009 compared to last year.

The mobile handset market has been tough on companies but good for consumers, who benefitted with lower-costs, including on high-end devices such as smartphones, IDC said. Stiff competition and hot demand has caused a price war for smartphones.

“Apple’s price cut on the iPhone 3G reflects a trend we expect to continue in upcoming quarters,” IDC said.

Nokia remained…