HTC Beats Samsung, Apple In U.S. Smartphone Market

Despite Samsung's recent jump to the top of the smartphone leaderboard on a global scale, it has yet to conquer the U.S. smartphone market--which is the world's largest.

During the third quarter of 2011, research firm Canalys finds that HTC shipped a total of 5.77 million smartphones in the U.S. Its performance stateside accounted for about 43% of HTC's total smartphone volumes, which reached 13.2 million worldwide.

By way of comparison, Samsung shipped 4.9 million smartphones to the U.S. market, led by its Galaxy-class devices. Samsung's worldwide numbers are double that of HTC's, however, with about 27.3 million units shipped around the globe, and better than Apple's, as well.

In the U.S., Apple fell to the number three spot with 4.6 million iPhones shipped during the most recent quarter. Apple also fell behind Samsung in terms of worldwide scale, with only 17 million iPhones sold. Apple blames this on the delay in launching the iPhone 4S, which came nearly four months later than many expected it to.

Canalys, however, contends that Apple will likely bounce back above both HTC and Samsung during the fourth quarter, thanks to heavy demand for the iPhone 4S. Apple sold more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices during the opening weekend it was available for sale.

Canalys compliments HTC, however, on its notable achievement.

"This is an awesome achievement for HTC, which has built a premium brand in a highly competitive market in just a few short years," Canalys analyst Chris Jones said in a statement. "It now has a strong range of 4G Android products, with devices ranged by each of the major carriers, and offers some of the most compelling and differentiated products found on the platform today."

Meanwhile, RIM saw its marketshare in the U.S. erode further. Canalys reports that RIM's global volumes dropped 58% from the year-ago period. Its U.S. market share slipped from 24% in the year-ago quarter to a depressing 9% in the third quarter this year.

The year-end numbers will be very interesting to see, and should highlight what sort of impact the iPhone 4S and RIM's BlackBerry OS 7 devices, in particular, have on the larger market.