Apple loses ground in the smartphone market

Overall sales are buoyant, says analyst, but Apple's share dips

Apple's smartphone share fell from 15.9 per cent to 14.1 per cent

Apple is losing some of its hold on the smartphone market, according to new research from Strategy Analytics.

The market grew by 43 per cent in the past quarter, rising to 60 million handsets shipped.

Nokia has a 43 per cent share of the market, and sold 24 million handsets in the quarter. Meanwhile BlackBerry maker RIM is in second place with 18.8 per cent share, representing a slight fall for the firm.

Apple, which is in third place, seems to be suffering most, and has seen its share of the market fall from 15.9 per cent to 14.1 per cent, a slight drop, but a drop nonetheless.

"The honeymoon period for Apple in the mobile world is clearly coming to an end," wrote Strategy Analytics' global wireless practice director Neil Mawston in the report.

However, Apple is unlikely to be too concerned about this slight drop, on the back of reporting its highest ever financial quarter and iPhone sales of 8.4 million units, a 61 per cent increase over last year.

That leaves the rest of the pack, which includes Motorola, Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson, with a 26.7 per cent chunk of the action.

On the back of less than positive second quarter results this week, Nokia said that it is seeing growth in smartphone sales, in spite of stiff competition from other parties.

Nokia's chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said: "We ended the second quarter with several reasons to be optimistic about our future. For one, the global handset market has continued to grow at a healthy pace, led by some of the less mature markets where Nokia is strong.

"We are also encouraged by the solid second-quarter performance of our mobile phones business, helped by an improving line-up of affordable models."