High demand for the latest iPhone and BlackBerry models, have put Apple and RIM ahead of companies such as Nokia.  Nokia’s share of the smartphone market has fallen to 38.9 percent in a quarter from 51.4 percent a year before. Apple has managed to pull ahead of the rest with the largest jump out of the top three leading companies.

Apple’s market share has jumped an astounding 17.3 percent, with RIM at their heels with a jump of 15.2 percent in a single quarter. “The introduction of the iPhone 3G in July and Apple’s expansion into many more countries helped propel the vendor to second place globally,” Canalys said in a statement. Overall the smartphone market has grown 28 percent in only a year, bringing the total to 40 million phones.

Nokia use to be the leader in the smartphone market for several years, but has fallen behind Apple and RIM in the last year causing a lot of worry for investors.  Microsoft takes fourth place with only 13.6 percent of the market share. With Nokia loosing ground, Symbian, the largest software vendor is seeing a market share fall in the last year going from 68.1 percent to 46.6 percent.

[Via Reuters]