Industry research firm Gartner just released its latest data on mobile phone sales for the first quarter of 2012. There are some interesting points to be pulled out of this report that I wanted to address.

Samsung dominates Android. Gartner’s data says that Korea-based Samsung shipped over 40% of all Android handsets last quarter. So that still leaves 60% of the market to other vendors, right? Yes, but according to Gartner none of these other vendors make up more than 10% of Android volume. None.

In terms of handset brands, Samsung is also now the #1 phone maker in the world, ahead of Nokia.

Nokia may have the #2 position in the market, but we need to remember that most of Nokia’s volume is based on the dying Symbian OS. Very little is based on its Windows-powered future at this point. So, considering that we’re looking at the death of the dumphone over the next few years, let’s look at smartphone vendors and volumes.

Samsung is the #1 player, having shipped 38 million smartphones. Most of these are Android powered, with a smaller number of Bada OS phones.

Here’s how smartphone market share looks, by vendor, based on the Gartner data:

1. Samsung with 26% market share
2. Apple with 23%
3. RIM with 7%

These are essentially the top 3 smartphone players right now. I realize that ZTE, LG and Huawei have a larger portion of the mobile market than RIM, but RIM is a pure play on smartphones whereas these three are not. Remember that other Android vendors have less than one quarter of Samsung’s volume.

What does this data mean to Apple?

Android is clearly taking a huge chunk of the market here, and that’s fine. The movement from the PC market to the mobile computing market has been a beautiful thing for Apple. They’ve gone from being a 6% market share player to something very significantly higher, depending on how you measure it. They don’t need to completely dominate the mobile phone market. Android will succeed, and so will Apple.

First and foremost, Apple just needs to keep delivering a beautiful user experience that makes people love their products. At the high end, it’s Samsung and Apple fighting it out, with Nokia and RIM trying to re-enter the race.

I’m more interested in what happens towards the middle and low end of the markets, in the fullness of time. This is not necessarily a 2012 or even 2013 strategy, but I’d like to see how Apple can profit from the continuing demise of Nokia.

Nokia still has almost 20% share of the mobile market. Granted, a LOT of that is at the uber-low end, and Apple isn’t going there anytime soon. But Nokia still has a very meaningful chunk of the mid and high end feature phone market. This is a dying market, and Symbian is a dying OS. Apple should be able to swoop in here and soak up a lot of the customers who move away form Nokia. After all, a Nokia customer may love the Nokia brand (maybe) but doesn’t necessarily feel the same way about Microsoft and Windows Phone.

With respect to pricing, if Apple can do something closer to what it did in the iPod space versus what it’s done in the Mac space, it can own a larger chunk of the lower end market. But I expect this to take a while. Tim Cook has made it abundantly clear that he won’t go to a lower price point if the product stinks as a result.

Either way, I love Apple’s positioning. They own a real platfrom, they’re already the #3 manufacturer of mobile phones in the world, and the #2 player is bleeding out.

Source: Gartner

Dan from WPCentral is over in London getting his formerly slab-hating hands on the first steel and glass tech to run Windows Phone 7.5 Mango... from Nokia. It's dubbed Lumia and Dan wants one. Badly.

The device is pretty smashing. The screen really is one of the best we've ever seen both in terms of color ("wet" blacks) and just how it pops up at you. The touch sensitivity, always a finicky setting, seems perfect to us on the device as well. The unibody design makes it truly an elegant piece of art and with a top notch camera, really makes this an excellent device.

Check out the video, and WPCentral's complete Nokia World and Lumia coverage and then let us know -- do you think Nokia and Microsoft together can give iPhone I run for its money?

New Nokia CEO Steven Elop, who formerly ran Microsoft's most successful business unit, has written one of the most brutally candid and forthright state-of-the-enterprise memos the mobile industry has ever seen, including an assessment of their position post-iPhone. Their "platform is burning":

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

Nokia makes brilliant hardware, arguably the best in the business, but they've been slow to adapt to the capacitive multitouch, app-centric, ecosystem-driven new smartphone world. And their software strategy has been fractured and frustrating. Elop clearly recognizes the issues and plans to start addressing them. Our own resident Nokia Expert, Matt Miller says:

Nokia will be holding their Capital Markets Day on Friday where Mr. Elop will reveal his future strategy. There are rumors that he might partner with Microsoft and release Windows Phone 7 devices or go with Android in an HTC-like multiple platform approach. As a fan of both Nokia and Windows Phone 7 you know what I would prefer. If Windows Phone 7 is brought to Nokia hardware then get ready to see a LOT more writing here on Nokia Experts as WP7 is my personal preferred platform at this time.

Will Nokia go with Windows Phone 7 or Android, try to relaunch MeeGo or Symbian at a faster pace with better user experience, or do something else entirely? And how, if at all, will it effect competition with iPhone? We'll find out Friday.

[Engadget via Nokia Experts]

Our friend Matt Miller over at sister-site NokiaExperts has just posted up his first impressions of the white Nokia N97. Like most premium handsets over the last few years, the N97 has been played up as another "iPhone killer" so we figured we'd better keep an eye on it at well.

What's Matt's take away? Good but not great if we're reading it right, though Nokia is promising updates that might make it even better.

Head on over to NokiaExperts for the full rundown and video overview, and let us know what you think!