Chinese oust nokia in smartphone top spot

According to the report, samsung is the undisputed market leader with 56.3 million computer cell phones sold. That means a market share of 31.3 percent. Apple ranks second with 26.9 million iphones sold and 15 percent of the market.

With its 7.5 million smartphones sold, ZTE is in a tight head-to-head race with blackberry provider RIM and HTC. According to IDC, ZTE has a market share of 4.2 percent, blackberrys 4.3 percent and HTC 4.0 percent. At the same time, the figures make it clear how much samsung and apple together dominate the market and how little space they leave for the other providers.

Nokia was still the clear smartphone market leader at the launch of the iphone in 2007 and at times controlled more than half of the business.

However, the finns with their aging operating system symbian were then overrun by apple phones with their new touchscreen operation and the many smartphones with the google operating system android. Samsung is by far the most successful android provider, but ZTE and HTC also rely on the system.

Nokia chose microsoft’s windows phone as its core smartphone platform in early 2011. While sales of symbian devices are falling fast, windows’ smartphone market share is stuck in the low single digits even a year after nokia launched its first lumia smartphones. In the coming weeks, however, new smartphones with the next program version windows phone 8 will be launched on the market, which microsoft and nokia hope will turn the trend around.