Gartner has just released third quarter reports for worldwide Mobile phone sales and the biggest news coming out is that Android, the open-source smartphone OS from Google, which was nowhere in scene just one year back(less than 4% smartphone marketshare in Q3 2009) has now become world’s second most popular smartphone OS, with 25.5% share in Q3 smartphone sales across the globe.

Now, both RIM and iOS has been left behind by Android in the race of becoming leading smartphone OS platform at global scale. With the pace with which Android has been growing and leapfrogging its competition, we won’t be surprised if Android jumps past Symbian in global smartphone sales, becoming the Most Popular smartphone OS within the next two quarters itself.

During third quarter of 2010, smartphone sales represented 19.3% of overall mobile phone sales and smartphone share is also increasing sharply since last year. By next year, we may see smartphone share grow upto 35-40% of total mobile phone sales.

The next quarter will actually be interesting as Windows Phone 7 OS, Microsoft’s revamped Mobile OS has just been launched and Microsoft is spending big bucks on getting the word out. Will WP7 prove disruptive, only time will tell !

There’s no doubt over the fact that there couldn’t be a better mobile carrier than Verizon to launch Droid as past history is evident enough that poor 3G service leads to poor customer response, no matter how capable the smartphone is.

Check out this video of the ‘Top 10 Gadgets of 2009′ by T.I.M.E.