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Figures published by tech analysts Gartner show that although more Nokia handsets were sold in the second quarter of 2010 compared with the same period last year, its share of the market had slipped from 51% to 41%.

With the hype around the iPhone, it might come as a surprise to see that Apple's share of the smartphone market increased only by 1.2% points, up to 14.2% for the quarter, which includes the first few days of iPhone 4 sales in the US.

Apple claims iPhone 4 has been the most successful launch in its history. Gartner's figures show 8.7 million iPhones sold for the period, but this includes the older iPhone 3G and 3GS, and it forecasts strong sales throughout the second half of the year.

The real winner for the quarter was not a single handset brand but the Android operating system, which is being used by manufacturers including Samsung and HTC to run smartphones.

It has overtaken phones operating on Apple's iOS to bolster its market share from 1.8% last year to 17.2% this year. During the quarter, 10.6 million Android handsets were shipped. It now trails only BlackBerry and Nokia in global smartphone sales.

Gartner attributed the boost in Android phone sales to a "more aggressive branding strategy".

Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at Gartner, said: "A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers, and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter."

There was further bad news for Nokia in the overall sales of  mobile handsets. While it remains the biggest brand in the world and sold more handsets this year than last, its share of the market declined from 36.8% to 34.2% for the quarter.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (August 2010)