According to IDC’s (International Data Corporation) research, in Q1 2011 the global smartphone market grew by 79.7 percent and made up 99.6 million units. And this happened thanks to a number of smartphone manufacturers, including HTC, Samsung and Apple.

Nokia remains the leader in this area for now, but its market share, according to the studies of different companies, including Gartner, is rapidly falling: If it was 38.3 percent last year, now it’s only 24.3 percent.

HTC’s share, on the other hand, in January-March 2011 has increased from 4.9 percent to 8.9 percent and made up 8.9 million units (by the way, if you remember, HTC has manufactured 30 million devices last year, and Microsoft made much money on them — $150 million. Read more about this in one of our previous posts — here).

Samsung showed even a higher growth rate – from 4.3 percent to 10.8 percent, and iPhone also shows great results: 18.7 percent against 15.7 percent and 18.7 million smartphones against 8.7 million.

So, looks like HTC, Samsung and Apple have really provided the global smartphone market growth. The experts from IDC predict a further strengthening of these manufacturers, while Nokia’s future is still indefinite… Besides, the experts say Android will continue to dominate on the market and will hold the 45.5 percent of the global OS market in 2015.