Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) slips to seventh position in smartphone sales in third quarter

The slide has come in fast in the space of less than a year. Nokia Corporation (ADR)(NYSE:NOK), once the top mobile phones maker in the world, has slipped down to the seventh position in the global smartphone market, according to research firm Gartner.

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Third-quarter world-wide mobile phone sales to end-users fell 3.1 percent year-on-year to around 428 million units, Gartner said.

Nokia's share slipped to 19.2 percent from 23.9 percent, while Samsung took the top spot with 22.9 percent of all handsets sold world-wide, up from 18.7 percent a year earlier, thanks largely to demand for its Galaxy smartphones, Gartner said.

Apple was the third-biggest vendor in the wider mobile-device market, as its market share increased to 5.5 percent from 3.9 percent, it added.

The Finnish handset maker sold 7.2 million smartphones, just 4.3 percent of the 169.2 million smartphones sold globally in the third quarter, taking it down to the seventh position from third place in the June quarter.

Global sales of smartphones, which now account for about 40 percent of the total mobile-phone industry, soared 46.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, Gartner said.

Apple with its iPhones and Samsung with its Galaxy range of smartphones were the leaders in the smartphone segment with a combined market share of 46.5 percent, Gartner said.

Nokia has been overtaken by companies such as HTC and Research in Motion.

According to Gartner, Nokia current position at almost bottom of the heap was due to its inability to innovate and keep up with its rivals.

Google Inc.'s open Android platform remained the dominant operating system for smartphones, as its market share rose to 72.4 percent from 52.5 percent a year earlier, Gartner said.