BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion has made significant gains in smartphone market share, mainly at the expense of Nokia, according to research company, Gartner. At the end of the second quarter last year, RIM share of the fast going mobile category was at 8.9% which jumped to 17.4% this year.

Nokia, meanwhile lost share from 50.8% last year to 47.5% at the end of Q2 this year.  The Finnish handset manufacturer still remains by far the biggest smartphone seller, having sold 15,297,900, compared to 5,594,159 by RIM.

'To stay competitive, Nokia will need to introduce more design variations amongst its Nseries models and keep innovating,' said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

Sharp’s market share halved from 8.2% to 4.1% during the year, while HTC doubled its share from 2.2% of the market last year to 4.1% this year.

In total 32,221,175 smartphones were sold between April and June this year, growing by 15.7% year on year.