For the fifteen years, Nokia has been ruling the world of mobile handsets, offering phones in all ranges and for all economic classes. According to the latest reports, Nokia has now lost the top slot in the smart phone market to Apple and then to Samsung, slipping two places. The mobile phone giant now stands at number 3 after Apple, which is at number 1 and then Samsung at number 2. The second quarter results, said researchers, pointed to the fact that Nokia seems to be buckling under the demand for sophisticated smart phones.

Nokia has faced a tough competition from both Apple and Samsung in the smart phone arena. While Apple takes the cake with its range if iPhones, with the fifth generation phone being on an impending release, Samsung has also brought out a range of smart phones that has garnered massive popularity. The sales of Nokia have been dwindling for sometime now. The latest results show a slip to the third place. Interestingly, Nokia still enjoyed the first position in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, Apple recorded sales of 20.3 million. While iPhone 4 is now more than a year old, it is surprising that the company still manages to sell the most number of phones since the shelf life of smart phones from customers’ point of view is never so long. In second place is Samsung with a sales figure of 19 million smart phones. Samsung has hugely benefited with the inclusion of Android technology in its smart phones. With Android giving a very tough competition to Apple and recording higher sales, Samsung stood to gain enormously. According to Neil Mawston, who is an analyst with the Strategy Analytics group said that Samsung’s Galaxy and S2 are the two models that have enjoyed enormous popularity. On the whole, the smart phone market witnessed a surge in volume by 76% when compared to the same time last year, as per Strategy Analytics, while ABI estimates a growth of 62%.

Despite the reports by these two analytic companies, IDC reported that the overall mobile phone market experienced a slump in the second quarter. The report said that while the previous quarter registered a sale growth of 16.8%, this quarter sales growth stood at 11.3%. A total of 361 million mobile phones were sold in the second quarter. Forecasts, however, were made at 374 million phones. Interestingly, while smart phone market is on the rise, the demand for simple and low end phones has fallen by 4%.