Europe-wide, Android accounts for 46.6 percent of the market while Apple holds 20 percent. Yet, in the UK at least, Apple remains the top smartphone brand with 8.6 million owners, or 28 percent of the market. Samsung is up to second place with a 24 percent share (up from an 11.2% share in 2011), while RIM is holding out in third place with a 15.2 percent share.

However, despite being the single most popular handset on sale in the UK, as with the rest of Europe, Android is the leading operating system, and Samsung has become the region's most popular handset maker, accounting for 30.4 percent of all smartphones in the region over the last quarter.

The in-depth figures, that are based on active handsets rather than smartphone shipments, cover the period from July to October 2012 and therefore will not reflect the impact of Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 launch -- handsets didn't start rolling out to users until November -- and only account for one month's sales of Apple's latest iPhone, which was launched across mainland Europe in September.