The mobile phone battle between a couple of big companies gets more gruesome everyday with patent infringing lawsuits they file against each other. But do think that affects the sales of mobile handsets? Not really. Market research firm Gartner has released its latest report on Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales which state that sale of smartphone in the third quarter of 2010 has shot up by 96 percent from the third quarter last year! Amongst the several smartphones available today, Google Android platform happily enjoys the second place for mobile sales in third quarter 2010.

The Gartner report stated that 417 million mobile phones were sold worldwide (officially) in the third quarter of 2010. This is a 35 percent growth year-on-year. In terms of hardware, Nokia tops the list by selling 110 million phones in third quarter of 2010 and next follows Samsung. Apple is on the fourth place while Research in Motion is on the fifth. Nokia, Samsung and LG all have lots of low-cost or entry level handsets which presumably are selling like hot cakes.

Due to supply constraints for iPhone 4, Apple seems to have hit a low but still managed to rank higher than RIM. When it comes to mobile sales based on smartphone OS, Nokia's Symbian takes away a bigger piece of cake with 36.6 percent. Next follows Google's beloved Android OS that slices 25.5 percent.

One of the major reasons for Android OS's fiercely growing popularity is the availability of different handsets at different price points. Be it Videocon Zeus or the freshly announced HTC Desire HD, Android phones with different price limits are available worldwide. Rest of the handset makers really need to think hard on their supply and distribution chain.