Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, has released a new report about world-wide mobile phone sales in 3Q 2010.

Delving inside the report overview you can look at how the best performing mobile phone operating systems are doing ( see chart above ).

As can be seen, Symbian still leads the field with 36.6% of market share but is down 10% when compared to 3Q 2009. Android on the other hand has made a leap from 3.5% to 25.5% in 12 months. Gartner say that Android is now installed within 1 in 4 smartphones shipped. At this rate you could expect Android to be the market leader sometime next year.

In third place is Apple's IOS and although sales rose, actual market share remains about the same.

The new kid on the block - Windows Phone 7 - may impact upon market-share next year but we will wait and see.