Nokia Hold Top Smartphone Spot; RIM, Apple, HTC & Moto Snap At Heels

Having told us all about general phone sales last Friday, market researchers IDC are back with some smartphone facts and figures.  As you might expect, the top five line-up is slightly different when you slice out basic handsets and featurephones, with Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung dropping off the list and being replaced by Apple, HTC and Motorola.  Nokia keep their number one spot, with a stable 39.3-percent of the smartphone market share, while third-place Apple look to be nibbling away at second-place RIM's share.

In fact, RIM's first quarter 2010 volumes rose but their market share dipped 1.5-percent, while Apple's volumes shot up from 3.8m to 8.8m and their market share climbed to 16.1-percent.  HTC took fourth place while Motorola came in at fifth, with their volumes almost doubling year on year.

IDC credit Motorola's Android push for the company's fortunes, and expects both them and HTC to continue their successes based on their hefty device roadmaps for the rest of 2010.  As for Nokia, while it still has twice the volumes of RIM, it will have to deliver strongly with Symbian^3 in Q3 2010 if it wants to maintain that lead.