Gartner: Global mobile phone sales stay flat while smartphone sales grow 12.8 percent

A new report from research firm Gartner says that global mobile phone sales stayed flat year-over-year in the past quarter while smartphone sales grew 12.8 percent, according to a press release. Gartner says that 308.9 million mobile units were sold in the third quarter, an increase of 0.1 percent year-over year. More than 41 million smartphones were sold in the quarter.

According to the new report, Nokia led overall global mobile phone sales with 36.7 percent of the market, down 1.5 percentage points year-over-year. Samsung lessened the gap, increasing its market share to 19.6 percent from 17.1 percent in last year's quarter. LG held 10.3 percent of the market, up from 7.8 percent. Motorola and Sony Ericsson both lost about 4 percentage points of market share each, ending up with 4.5 and 4.3 percent, respectively.

Nokia still leads smartphone sales, owning 39.3 percent of the market, though it fell 3 percentage points. Research In Motion increased smartphone market share to 20.8 percent from 15.9 percent. Apple also increased its share, growing to 17.1 percent of the smartphone market. HTC and Samsung claimed 6.5 percent and 3.2 percent of the market respectively.

The research firm expects fourth quarter sales to grow year-over-year because of holiday sales.