The iPhone has taken the top-selling spot on the mobile phone market in the third quarter of 2008, after it managed to surpass Motorola RAZR in consumer preferences, NPD Group revealed in its most recent report. The achievement is more notable as Motorola RAZR lost the spot it has kept for the past 12 months.

The results come after a strong second quarter for the mobile phone market, and an increasing popularity of the iPhone, but also after a 15 percent year-over-year decline in Q3 in domestic handset purchases by adult consumers. Furthermore, while average selling price went up 6 percent to $88, consumer handset sales revenue went down 10 percent to $2.9 billion.

“The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality,” Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, explained. “Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced features,” he added.

The top five selling handset models were Apple’s iPhone 3G, followed by Motorola RAZR V3 (all models), Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve (all models), LG Rumor and LG enV2.

The change in hierarchy is the obvious result of consumers changing preferences, but also a result of an increased consumer satisfaction with the iPhone.

The most popular features consumers are looking for when purchasing a phone are: a camera (for 43 percent of handset buyers), the ability to send and receive text messages (for 36 percent of the buyers). Furthermore, the report also shows an increase in sales for QWERTY-equipped handsets: last year, QWERTY handsets account for 11 percent of total sales, while this year in the third quarter, the percent grew to 30.

NPD also noted that in Q3 2008, 83 percent of phones purchased were Bluetooth enabled, 10 percent up from last year, and 68 percent were music enabled, up from just 49 percent last year.

“A growing data divide continues in cellular handsets. Those who see the value in wireless Internet access are justifying the investment, whereas voice-centric users have little incentive to upgrade, which is obviously detrimental to operators who seek to sell data plans and media access services to their subscribers,” Rubin said.

According to another recent report, this time released by J.D. Power and Associates, the iPhone keeps growing, as it ranked first in the overall consumer satisfaction among business wireless smartphone users.

This goes to show how important it is to cover the needs of all types of consumers, and it explains the iPhone’s increasing success and the reason why it is now Apple’s most talked about product.

Apple reported just last month that quarterly iPhone results for the fiscal 2008 fourth quarter ending September 27 skyrocketed compared to the same period last year, from 1,119,000 in 2007 to 6,892,000 this year.

The second-generation iPhone significantly contributed to greater sales, especially after Apple established new partnerships with carriers in over 70 countries.