Gartner: Global smartphone sales grew 47% year-on-year in Q3 2012

Nokia, which has suffered losses for six consecutive quarters, seems to have gotten used to the decline in market ranking. Yesterday, market research company Gartner released a report showing that Nokia's share of the smartphone market fell from third place in the previous quarter to seventh place.

According to Gartner's statistics, global smartphone sales in the third quarter of this year increased by 47% year-on-year, but the main beneficiaries were Samsung and Apple, which controlled 46.5% of the smartphone market. Nokia's smartphone sales were sluggish, with shipments of 7.2 million units, accounting for only 4.3% of the market share, ranking seventh. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that Nokia "has a lot of work to do in the future" to compete with powerful rivals such as Samsung and Apple.

Regarding the market prospects of Nokia's Lumia smartphones equipped with Microsoft's Windows Phone system, Gartner reported that "in the fourth quarter, Lumia smartphones will help curb the decline in Nokia's market share, but it will not bring a significant improvement to Nokia's market position until 2013."