I previously blogged about Apple becoming the fourth largest handset manufacturer. Here, I look at the figures for smartphones only. The at-a-glance status is:

Nokia 26.5M (33%)
Apple 14.1M  (18%)
RIM 12.4M (15%)
Samsung 7.9M (10%)
HTC 6.8M  (9%)
Moto 3.8M (5%)
Others 8.5M

Traditionally Q3 is Nokia’s worst time, and Apple’s best. They only bring out one iPhone a year, and this is reflected in the sales figures. My guess is that a vast majority of these sales are the iPhone 4, so we can estimate their current sales of this mobile at 12-14 million. What is significant about this though is that Apple has jumped ahead of RIM. In spite of the youth appeal of BlackBerry and BBM, the Canadian company have lost their way, failing to bring out the killer handsets that others have. Samsung have done particularly well, but it’s no surprise when you look at the Galaxy S and their entry level smartphones. What they have also done through using Google’s OS, Android, is make it the second most popular operating system:

Symbian 29M – 36%
Android 20M – 25%
iOS 14M – 18%
RIM 12M – 15%
WinMo 2M – 3%

Samsung, Motorola and HTC have all benefitted from using Android. This appears to have been at the expense of Symbian, which may have previously appealed to the Android manufacturers.The distribution of Android amongst manufacturers is as follows:

1. HTC 33%
2. Samsung 31%
3. Motorola 18%
4. SonyEricsson 8%

Although Samsung sell more smartphones than HTC, some of those use their own Bada OS. Interestingly sales of Bada phones are greater than Android sales were at the equivalent point. Certainly one OS to watch.

Overall smartphone sales were up this quarter by nearly 30% – yet more evidence that the mobile world will be all smartphones sooner or later.

*Source figures from TomiAhonen Consulting