Nokia has dropped out of the top five global smartphone vendors, with its place being taken by BlackBerry manufacturer RIM.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer (left) and Nokia's Stephen Elop show off the new Lumia 920.
Samsung extended
its lead as the world's top smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2012,
followed by Apple,
according to IDC's
quarterly tracking survey.
Nokia, once the top
smartphone vendor in the world, fell out of the top five for the first time
since IDC began tracking the market in 2004.
"Nokia's share losses have meant gains for competitors," said Kevin Restivo,
an analyst at IDC. "The company's transition away from Symbian-powered
smartphones to ones shipped with Windows Phone has left ample opportunity
for rivals to steal share away from Nokia over the past 18 months.
"However, the smartphone market is still relatively nascent, which means
there's room for multiple vendors and operating systems to flourish,
including Nokia."
Nokia's place in the top five was taken by Research In Motion, the Canadian
firm that makes BlackBerry smartphones. Its shipments and market share
declined year-on-year but its position in third on the list was helped by
the greater decline of Nokia and by a slumping HTC, which was ahead of RIM
this time last year but fell to fifth in the last quarter.
