Like a form guide for those who like to bet on the horses, IDC's analysis primarily focused on worldwide shipments has a knack of cutting through the chaff to show each player's performance without bending to the will of common perception.
As such, while positive headlines where Nokia is concerned are hard to come by, IDC's most recent evaluation has the Finnish firm holding its position as the world's largest mobile manufacturer, with 30.8 percent of the market in Q4 2010.
No knocking NokiaThough Nokia's share is down 6.4 percent year on year, the firm is still some distance ahead of its nearest competitor Samsung on a 20.1 percent share, itself down 0.1 percent on Q4 2009.
Samsung's share slide comes despite a ramp up in quarterly shipments up from 68.8 million units in the period a year previous to 80.7 million units in Q4 2010.
Indeed, as you might expect from a market where smartphone sales are on the up, total mobile shipments hit 401.4 million units up from 340.5 million units in Q4 2009.
Super ZTE
However, though smartphones have become the focus for the majority of the 'big five', Chinese firm ZTE which predominantly has a base in feature phones, but has also offers Android handsets moved into fourth spot in Q4 2010, overtaking Apple and pushing it down to fifth spot in the process.
That's despite Apple's shipments almost doubling to 16.2 million units from 8.7 million units in Q4 2009.
"Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year," said senior research analyst at IDC's mobile devices technology and trends team, Ramon Llamas.
"Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list."
[source: IDC]
