S. Korean handset makers trail leader Nokia closely

South Korean handset makers Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. continued to show strong growth in the global market in the second quarter to closely trail industry leader Nokia Corp., a report showed Friday. According to the report by market researcher Gartner Inc., Nokia held the largest 22.8 percent share of the global mobile phone market in the April-June period by selling 97.8 million units. Samsung ranked second, selling 69.8 million units of mobile phones in the April-June period for a market share of 16.3 percent, while LG accounted for 5.7 percent with 24.4 million units in sales to place third. The two South Korean firms made up a combined 22 percent, or 94.2 million units, a mere 0.8 percentage point behind Nokia. They narrowed the gap with the Finnish company in the second quarter from 4.5 percentage point during the same period last year. U.S.-based Apple Inc. was the fourth biggest seller in the world mobile phone market with 19.6 million units for a 4.6 percent share, said Gartner. The world mobile phone market grew 16.5 percent on-year as 428.7 million units of smartphones and feature phones were sold in the second quarter. Gartner said that Samsung has picked up strongly on brisk sales of its latest Galaxy model, while Apple's iPhone 4 sold like hotcakes in around 100 countries. In the growing smartphone market, Google Inc.'s Android is the most widely used operating system (OS) worldwide with a market share of 43.4 percent, while Nokia's Symbian took up 22.1 percent and Apple's iOS held 18.2 percent, said Gartner.