Nokia sold 111 million phones in the second quarter of 2010 to maintain its lead on top of the mobile phone market, at 34% market share. Based on rumours we hear in North America about Nokia’s inevitable demise, this comes as quite a shock to me, and, I’m sure, to a few of you.

RIM kept its 4th place hold on the market with 11 million handsets, and only 3.4%, but enough to keep it ahead of Apple, who sold 8.7 million iPhones last quarter for a 2.7% market share.

HTC is the big surprise here, with a 139% year-over-year increase in handsets. This is mainly due to Android’s huge proliferation in the United States, and HTC’s increased brand recognition worldwide as a favourable and reliable company.

Android, as we mentioned previously, is the number one platform in America, overtaking RIM in the last quarter. Worldwide, it still trails Symbian by a lot, and BlackBerry by a small amount, but has overtaken iOS to take third place at 10% worldwide marketshare.

Two years ago, few would have predicted that Android would become as successful and ubiquitous as it has in such a short amount of time. But here we are, two years later, and it’s a thriving brand, product, and platform.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q10 (Thousands of Units)

(via Gartner Research)