Nokia Lumia 1020, 520, Others Make Strides, Outsell iPhone 5

**Editor’s Note:


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for our list of July’s hottest selling smartphones to see how the iPhone fared against Nokia’s Lumias and the rest of the competition.**

The iPhone might still be the world’s best-selling smartphone, but Nokia and its Lumia line are making important steps in some parts of the world.

While much of the world counts down the days until the next iPhone release-date announcement widely predicted to be Sept. 10 there are regions where Nokia’s Lumias including everything from the budget 520 to the flagship 1020 are beating up on Apple’s iconic device.

New data from International Data Corp. (IDC), released this week, show that Lumia sales doubled in the U.K. last quarter, to nearly 400,000 units. In Italy, Nokia is the No. 2 smartphone vendor, with annual sales jumping 17 percent. Only Samsung is ahead of Nokia there. It also trails only Samsung in its native country of Finland.

But that’s where the good news stops. Sales of Lumias declined overall in Western Europe last quarter, down 11 percent. That puts Nokia in fifth place among smartphone manufacturers there. That’s particularly bad when you consider that smartphone sales overall are up 19 percent year over year, the Wall Street Journal noted. The pending iPhone 5S might very well make Nokia’s numbers slide even more before the year is out.

Nokia squeaked out the No. 3 market-share position in the U.S. last quarter, just beating out BlackBerry, but way behind Samsung and Apple.

Follow senior online managing editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.