Forget the iPhone; Nokia still beating all rivals in smartphone sales

While the iPhone may appear the dominant force in the smartphone market, new research from Gartner has showed that Nokia still dominate worldwide smartphone sales.

Symbian-based phones had a market share of 46.9% in 2009, selling 80,878,000 units overall. Though this represented a fall of 5.5% of Nokia’s market share in 2008, it was still 46,532,000 more units sold than Blackberry handsetsand 55,989,000 more than Apple handsets.

RIM and Apple did however experience substantial growth in the smartphone market in 2009, with RIM’s market share growing from 16.6% to 19.9% and Apple’s growing massively, from 8.2% to 14.4%.

Though Nokia have struggled to impress in the smartphone market, the Nokia X6 and N900 smartphones represented a strong move forward for the company. Also, brand loyalty worldwide remains strong, and with the new Meego platform just over the horizon, 2010 could be another strong year for Nokia.

For more fact and figures from the Gartner research, click here.