For years Nokia has been leading the mobile phone market followed by Motorola and Samsung. But in the recent quarters the U.S. cell phone supplier has been truly week and Samsung has left its rival behind in the Q2 2007.

Following the recently announced financial results for the second quarter recently announced by Motorola and Samsung Electronics, several analysts have come to conclusions that the South Korean-based electronics giant has left the U.S.-based Motorola behind in terms of cell phone shipments in the Q2 2007. Still, the world’s largest maker of handsets, Nokia, not only remains on top, but might become the biggest beneficiary of Motorola’s market share drop.

“In revenue terms Samsung had already overtaken Motorola as the 2^nd place vendor. But the big news this quarter is that its shipments have overtaken Motorola’s. It is interesting that, although Samsung’s shipments this quarter are very strong, they are on the trend and do not show a huge uptick benefiting from Motorola’s weakness. That may mean that Nokia is the major beneficiary of Motorola’s woes,” said analyst Martin Garner from Ovum market research firm.

According to recent announcements by cell phone makers, Samsung succeeded in shipping around 37.4 million mobile phones in the second quarter, whereas Motorola said it shipped from 35 to 36 million devices in Q2 2007. Sony Ericsson reported unit handset sales increases to 24.9 million during the quarter. Data from Nokia, LG and others were is not yet available.

Samsung recently said that it would boost sales of its mobile phones to over 150 million this year and will also capture higher market share. Meanwhile, it is uncertain whether Motorola actually manages to keep its shipments in the range of 200 million units this year.

According to Gartner market researcher, sales of Motorola were stagnating in Q2 and Q3 last year and after an uptick in Q4 started to drop and in Q2 2007 the number of cell phone units that the company sold was on the same level as back in Q2 2005. By contrast, companies like Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have been gradually increasing their sales in the last one and a half years.