Gartner: The smartphone market still belongs to Apple and Samsung

Smartphone market reports are telling roughly the same story nowadays: While Samsung and Apple continue to dominate, everyone else continues to not matter.

The latest report from research firm Gartner is no exception to that trend. It estimates that Apple and Samsung controlled 46.5 percent of the smartphone market the third quarter.

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In real numbers: Samsung sold 55 million smartphones, while Apple sold 23.6 million of its own devices.

Obviously, Samsung’s numbers also boosted those of Android, which increased its market command to 72.4 percent from 52.5 percent. (Apple’s share slipped to 13.9 percent.)

Another not-so-surprising tidbit: Nokia’s still not doing so great. While Gartner estimated that the company sold a healthy 82.3 million mobile phones during the quarter, its smartphone efforts told the opposite tale: Nokia only moved 7.2 million of them, which is why the company finds itself in seventh place in the smartphone market.

Little of that is surprising, seeing as IDC made similar estimates in its own third quarter report last month. But Gartner’s numbers effectively show one thing: Nokia’s Windows 8 phones better start selling — and soon.

As for RIM, Gartner has some good news and some bad news. The good news is that BlackBerry OS is now third in global smartphone market share. The bad news? At 5.3 percent, RIM’s share is half of what it was at this point last year. Clearly, BlackBerry 10 can’t get here soon enough.