Samsung Tops Smartphone Sales: Gartner
NEW YORK (
) - According to the industry experts at
Gartner
, overall cell phone sales were down worldwide during the third quarter, but smartphone sales continue to rise. That's good news for industry leader
Samsung
, but not so great for
Nokia
(NOK) - Get Report
and its legacy lines of "feature" phones.
Samsung has now taken over the number one spot with 22.9% of worldwide sales, up 4 percentage points from the same period last year. Nokia is now in second place with 19.2%.
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
takes over the number three spot with 5.5%, up from 3.9% in the third quarter of 2011.
Number four, China's
ZTE
, saw increased market share with 3.9%, while Korea's
LG Electronics
suffered a drop in sales but remains in fifth place with 3.3% (down from last year's third-place showing of 4.8%).
Rounding out this quarter's top ten are
Huawei
(2.8%), China's
TCL
(2.2%),
Research in Motion
(RIMM)
(2.1%),
Motorola
, a division of
(GOOG) - Get Report
(2.0%) and
HTC
(2.0%). All other manufacturers account for the remaining 34.1% of cell phone handset sales.
As for sales of units by operating system, Google widened its lead this past quarter. Android sales now account for a whopping 72.4% of all smartphone sales - up from 52.5% just one year ago. Apple's iOS is in second place with 13.9%, down from 15% last year. Research in Motion's Blackberry OS dropped from 11% to 5.3% in the third quarter, followed by Samsung's other smartphone platform, Bada (3.0%), Symbian (2.6%, down from 16.9%) and
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
Windows Phones (up from 1.5% to 2.4%) rounding out Gartner's list.
Overall, Gartner reports that nearly 170 million smartphones were sold worldwide during this year's third quarter.
--Written by Gary Krakow in New York.
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Gary Krakow is TheStreet's senior technology correspondent.