[Ben]

The global smartphone market grew 78 percent in the third quarter of 2010, reaching 77 million units, with Apple the star performer as the Californian vendor stole second place from RIM. According to Strategy Analytics (SA), in the July to September period Apple closed the gap on Nokia to the smallest level since first entering the mobile market in 2007. “Apple’s main hardware competitors remain Nokia and RIM, but Samsung and HTC are rapidly expanding their Android portfolios and attempting to close the gap on Apple,” noted the analyst firm. Nokia’s dominant lead fell off slightly over the year, from 37.8 percent in Q3 2009 to 34.4 percent in Q3 2010. “Nokia was shipping 3 times more smartphones than Apple last year but that ratio has now fallen to two times,” added SA.

Smartphones made up 23 percent of total worldwide handset volumes during the quarter, leaping from 20 percent in the prior quarter. “We expect component shortages to remain a challenge for smartphone vendors into the western and eastern holiday seasons of Q4 2010 and Q1 2011,” stated SA. “The smartphone industry is still struggling to ramp up the production capacity of key components after major cutbacks during the recession of 2009, while smartphones are now facing extra competition for many of the same components from the emerging tablet segment.”
GSMA Mobile Business Briefing

Only Nokia now rule Apple in smartphone market share, with Nokia's vast smartphone portfolio only outselling the iPhone 2:1! I never in a month of Sundays thought that one phone could garner such share. It seems... wrong!

[The Mullet of G]

So 2nd place is good enough to be the star performer these days? This is like school sports where everyone is a winner. :D

I think its worth taking into account Nokia's impressive results, not only has it weathered the worst of the storm it actually managed to beat Q3 expectations, and all of this without a single handset worthy of note. Next quarter we'll see the positive impact of the Symbian^3 devices come to bear, I really think Nokia are moving past their Vista moment, I expect its market share to grow over the coming quarters, while RIM are likely to eventually fall to 3rd behind Android, after that its only a matter of time before Android rolls into 2nd place.