Nearly half of the world’s smartphones are still powered by the Symbian OS, according to a new report, with the BlackBerry operating system coming in a solid second. Look in the rearview mirror, though, and you’ll see the iPhone and Android platforms gaining ground at an impressive rate.

The wireless analysts at Gartner released their estimates Wednesday for first-quarter 2010 smartphone sales, and a quick look at the numbers tells a fascinating tale: Yes, Symbian (the OS that powers Nokia’s smartphones) and BlackBerry manufacturer RIM are still leading the pack, but they’re slipping, while iPhone and Android were the only major mobile platforms to boost their respective market shares compared with last year.

Android showed the most startling growth, jumping from a 1.6 percent share of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2009 to 9.6 percent in the first quarter of this year —leapfrogging Microsoft’s fading Windows Mobile platform to move into fourth place — according to the Gartner report.

In third place comes the iPhone OS, nabbing 15.4 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, up from 10.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

Second place in the Gartner smartphone remote still belongs to RIM and the BlackBerry OS, with a 19.4 percent share of the global market — not bad, but down from last year’s 20.6 percent.

Still king of the smartphone world (for now) is Symbian, with a commanding 44.3 percent of the market — down a worrying 4.5 percentage points from last year.
Symbian’s continued dominance of the world smartphone market reflects Nokia’s strong global handset sales: According to Gartner’s latest figures, Nokia accounted for an industry-leading 36.2 percent of worldwide handset sales last quarter.

But as Gartner analysts point out, Nokia has yet to come out with a touch-screen, high-end smartphone to compete with the iPhone or, say, the Android-powered HTC Evo 4G. Nokia’s just-announced N8 might be a candidate, but it’s not due for months. Meanwhile, Apple is poised to announce the expected next-generation iPhone, and the upcoming Evo 4G for Sprint is looking hotter than hot.

I’d say the real story in Gartner’s report is the emergence of Android, coming from basically nowhere last year to grab nearly 10 percent of the global smartphone market. Combined with last week’s NPD report that claimed Android phones outsold the iPhone in the U.S. last quarter, it’s starting to look like the Android OS is on a serious roll.

Via Yahoo