Nokia slips to seventh place in the booming smartphone mkt

Nokia Corp. has slipped to seventh place in the booming global smartphone market in the third quarter, as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. maintained their hold on a segment once dominated by the Finnish company.

Gartner's mobile phone sales estimate for Q3, 2012 has revealed a whooping 49 pc increase in smartphone sales ( compared to Q3, 2011) totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012.

Nokia accounted for 7.2 million, or 4.3 pc, of the 169.2 million smartphones sold world-wide in the latest quarter, taking the company down from third place in the prior three-month period, research firm Gartner Inc. said Wednesday.

The smartphone market was dominated by Apple and Samsung. "Both vendors together controlled 46.5 percent of smartphone market leaving a handful of vendors fighting over a distant third spot," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner

Nokia slipped from No. 3 in the second quarter of 2012 to No. 7 in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2012. RIM moved to the No. 3 spot with HTC not far behind, at No. 4. "Both HTC and RIM have seen their sales declining in past few quarters, and the challenges might prevent them from holding on to their current rankings in coming quarters," added Gupta.