According to latest report from research firm IDC, Apple's iPhone and Android phones from a variety of manufacturers were instrumental in lifting second-quarter smartphone sales in Western Europe by 48 percent year on year to nearly 22 million but the boost came at the expense of the Finnish handset maker Nokia. The company's Western European smartphone market halved from the previous three months to just 11 percent behind Apple, Samsung, BlackBerry developer Research In Motion and Taiwan's HTC. In the first quarter, it had dropped to No. 2 with Apple grabbing the top spot in smartphones and Samsung Electronics in overall cellphone sales. The reason behind the hard decline has been the increasing popularity of Google Android powered devices made by Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson. Nokia on the other hand has been concentrating on making the transition from its Symbian platform to the Windows mobile platform.

Globally, IDC predicts that the Android OS will account for 39% of the market this year, which will be a sharp increase from 23% share of a year ago. This prediction seems to be in alignment with that of telecoms analyst Ovum which says that the total Android app downloads will surpass Apple's iOS installs this year by a ratio of 8.1 billion to 6 billion. Ovum expects mobile application downloads worldwide to grow 144 percent this year though Apple's iOS platform will continue to lead in paid app revenues.

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