Nokia, once at the forefront of the mobile phone business and the worlds largest smartphone makers has been flagging somewhat recently even with Microsoft coming aboard with their Windows Phone 7 devices, but maybe that is too late as apparently as of this quarter Nokia is longer be the largest smartphone manufacturer.

According to an article over on Reuters, Nomura analysts have commented in a research note that “Nokia looks set to relinquish its smartphone crown to Samsung and Apple. Further emphasizing the shift in power to Asia is our forecast for HTC to almost match Nokia during 2012.”

Thus it appears that Samsung is to take the crown in this quarter and will also apparently be followed by Apple overtaking Nokia in the next quarter. Apparently Nokia has lost initiative in the market against the likes of Android and iOS.

Both Canalys and Gartner have apparently stated they saw Nokia losing smartphone leadership later this year. Nokia has held onto the smartphone reigns since way back in 1996, but as they say, nothing lasts forever, and in this case most saw it coming anyway, so no real need to shed any tears.