Surging demand for the latest iPhone and Blackberry models helped Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) to win larger shares of the smartphone market in the third quarter at the expense of top vendor Nokia, market research firm Canalys said yesterday.
Nokia's share of the market for smartphones, handsets with computer-like features like e-mail, fell to 38.9% in the quarter from 51.4% a year before, Canalys said.
However, Apple's market share jumped to 17.3% and RIM's to 15.2% in the quarter.
"The introduction of the iPhone 3G in July and Apple's expansion into many more countries helped propel the vendor to second place globally," Canalys said in a statement.
The researcher said it was "quite feasible" to expect RIM to take second place from Apple in the holiday-sales-fuelled fourth quarter, helped by new products: Bold, Storm and clamshell Pearl 8220.
While growth in the wider cellphone market slowed to just 3% in the third quarter, the smartphone market grew 28% from a year ago to 40 million phones.
Nokia has led the smartphone market with a large margin for several years, but its sales fell from a year ago for the first time in the third quarter as it was only ramping up production of new top-end models.
The drop worries investors and analysts as this is expected to weigh on the Finnish group's profit margins.
The success of Apple and RIM pushed US software giant Microsoft, with its Windows Mobile, to the fourth spot on the smartphone operating system market with a 13.6% market share, Canalys said.
Symbian, the largest software vendor, saw its market share fall to 46.6% from 68.1% a year ago as its main user Nokia and smaller Japanese vendors lost ground.
Canalys said it expects to see next year a close battle between Apple, RIM, Microsoft and Linux for the number two spot in the smartphone software market.
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