Research gurus Gartner has published their latest findings for the worldwide mobile phone industry, covering worldwide smartphone sales for the first quarter of 2011 – and it makes for very interesting reading, especially when compared to Q1 2010.

Lets go back to that time period first.  Leading the way was Nokia, with a massive 44% market share with their Symbian OS, with RIM and their BlackBerry phones coming in a distant second with 19%. Apple’s iOS was catching up with a 15% share, while Google Android was still languishing in fourth place with just over 9% market share.

Twelve months on, and the smartphone world is a very different place. Google’s Android now leads the way with an amazing 36% market share as of Q1 2011, while Nokia has slipped into second position with 27%; hardly disastrous but let’s face it, it’s not likely to pick up again just yet. RIM has also suffered over the last year, and now lie fourth overall with 12% market share. This leaves Apple and iOS still in third place, with their cut of the pie increasing to 16.8%.

Eagle-eyed smartphone fans will notice we’ve not mentioned Microsoft yet, who at the beginning of 2010 didn’t even have a competitive smartphone OS, a fact demonstrated by their fifth position and woeful 3.6% market share. Unsurprisingly they still occupy fifth place in Q1 2011, but their share has almost doubled to 6.8%.  Gartner also put Microsoft’s sales of Windows Phone 7 at 1.6 million for the same period, a much better performance than previously feared.

While the major movers and shakers here are Android and Symbian, it’s a little surprising to see iOS gain such a small amount of share last year, especially seeing as their total unit figure has doubled in that time – facts which further highlight Android’s complete dominance of the current smartphone market.