Samsung smartphone is World's No. 1

The report also said the growth of mobile devices worldwide totaled 440.5 million units sold during the third quarter, a 5.6 percent rise from a year earlier. The research firm said this growth could be due to inventory buildup from late shipping of new devices in the latter part of the quarter, as well as preparation for the holiday season.

Nokia continued to hold the top spot for mobile devices for the third quarter, accounting for 23.9 percent of global sales. This could be attributed to Nokia's offering of dual-sim and feature phones, the report said.

For smartphones, sales to end users was 115 million units for the third quarter. This figure showed a 42 percent growth over the same quarter last year. Smartphone sales were responsible for 26 percent of all mobile phone sales.

Based on the figures released by Gartner, Samsung is in the lead for smartphones in terms of vendor shipments (27.8 million units) and vendor market share (23.8 percent). Second place goes to Apple, which sold 17.1 million units and claimed a 14.6 percent market share. Nokia placed third with 16.8 million units sold and a market share of 14.4 percent.