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Apple confounds sceptics by making it into Top Ten of mobile makers... or does it?

Gartner's research showed Apple, Research in Motion and ZTE Corp are now in the top ten of world phone makers - a fact which has been greeted with ecstasy by iPhone fans. They replaced (wait for it!) Taiwanese BenQ, Chinese manufacturer Bird, and  French company Sagem... of whom so many have said: "Who?"

This hasn't stopped the iPhone being featured as the top winner of this story.

Apple, boasts Jim Dalrymple "was joined in the top ten by ZTE and Research in Motion with its popular BlackBerry device." That's the MacWorld interpretation of the Gartner figures.

It contrasts somewhat with the rather more detailed report by Jim's colleague Jonny Evans which gave Apple's actual share:

"Apple holds 0.6% of the world market, while RIM has 1.2%. Motorola saw its share fall to 11.9% from 21.5%. Nokia, at 40.4%, and Samsung, at 13.4%, continue to dominate global handset sales"

- showing the Blackberry to be twice as popular as the iPhone... which rather makes it look as if Apple joined RIM, rather than the other way round.

The real "shock! horror!" story is Motorola. In the previous survey, Motorola had a fifth of the world market -at 21.5%. This year, it's slumped by almost half, to 11.9% ...

Oddly, Motorola is the only mobile phone maker ever to partner with Steve Jobs as an authorised iTunes player maker, with the unlamented ROKR phone. That got updated this January with the ROKR E8. [picture above, right]. The start of a bright new future, perhaps?

Note: this is not an anti-Apple story. It's an anti-hype story.