RIM falls from top 5 in global sales: report

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has been knocked out off the list of the world's top five mobile phone sellers globally, according to technology research company IDC.

IDC's estimates, released Friday, also suggest Apple slipped to fifth spot at the end of 2010, despite a record quarter for shipments of its iPhone.

"Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year," Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC, said in a release.

"Motorola, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010, are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list," Llamas said.

Apple surpassed Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM in the third-quarter of 2010 in IDC's quarterly rankings. RIM first cracked IDC's top five list last April.

The No.1 mobile phone seller in the fourth quarter was Nokia, followed by Samsung, LG Electronics, Chinese company ZTE and Apple.

The research firm said it expects to release numbers covering the worldwide smartphone market for the fourth quarter next week.

These numbers will give a picture of RIM's competitiveness against Apple and other smartphone sellers that use Google's Android operating system.