Mac OS X overtakes Windows...

iPhone maker Apple has put two metaphorical fingers up at Steve Ballmer & co as it cruises past Redmond's Window Mobile on the global smartphone OS shipment highway.

Stats from analyst house Gartner for the third quarter of 2008 show Apple moving into third place in the global ranking with 12.9 per cent market share, behind BlackBerry-maker RIM which has 15.9 per cent. G1-maker HTC was fourth with a 4.5 per cent share.

Nokia remains in the number one spot, with 42.4 per cent market share. However Gartner says the Mighty Finn recorded its first decline in sales, of three per cent year-on-year. The analyst blamed increased competition in the consumer smartphone space.

One competitor whose star is currently rising is RIM - Gartner said sales of BlackBerry smartphones increased 81.7 per cent in Q3 as the company expanded its consumer presence and refreshed its portfolio with new phones such as the touchscreen Storm.

But economic gloom is continuing to take its toll on the high end mobile market: Q3 saw the weakest year-on-year growth since Gartner began tracking smartphones. Sales totalled 36.5 million units, a mere 11.5 per cent increase on Q3 2007. Growth was 15.7 per cent in Q2 2008.

Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement: "The current economic climate is negatively impacting sales of higher end devices. Going forward, we should expect the smartphone device market to continue to grow but at a slower pace."

The success of the iPhone 3G pushed Apple's Mac OS X into third place in the global smart phone OS provider rankings, behind Symbian and RIM.

For the first time iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America.

Gartner added open-source initiatives such as Android and the Symbian Foundation will challenge Windows Mobile's licensing model. Redmond's offering is also being held back by the lack of a competitive user interface, according to the analyst.