Nokia Ships Almost Twice as Many Smartphones as Apple in Q3

The third quarter of the ongoing year ended several weeks ago, and various mobile phone makers started to announce their performance for the three months period. The entire smartphone market went up by 78 percent, a recent report from Strategy Analytics notes, adding that Nokia remained the market leader for a quarter more.

On the smartphone segment, the Finnish giant managed to move a number of no less than 26.5 million units in the three months time frame, almost twice as much as Apple, the maker of the iPhone, which shipped 14.1 million devices.

However, it appears that Nokia still lost market share, as the total market shipment volumes reached a record 77 million units in the third quarter of 2010.

The company saw its market share hitting the 34.4 percent line, down from 37.8 percent a year ago (Nokia accounted for 38.8 percent of the smartphone market for the entire year 2009).

Apple on the other hand grew its market share from 17.0 percent in the third quarter of the last year to 18.3 percent in Q3 2010.

“Global smartphone shipments grew 78 percent from a year earlier, the industry’s fastest rate since the mid-2000s,” Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics, stated.

“However, the surging volumes are placing heavy demands on component suppliers and moderate shortages of select components are emerging ahead of the Q4 holiday season.”

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has lost market share too, going down from 19.6 percent a year ago to 16.1 for the third quarter of the ongoing year.

However, RIM did ship a larger number of smartphones in the time frame, going up from 8.5 million in Q3 2009, to 12.4 million in the three months period ended September 30, 2010.

“RIM continues to be hampered by a limited presence in the high-growth touchscreen segment and consequently its global smartphone marketshare has edged down from 20 percent to 16 percent during the past 12 months,” the research firm notes.

Additional info on the Strategy Analytics report can be found on the research firm's website.