Nokia's ten year reign on top of the Australian phone market is now over thanks to Apple and Android phones.

According to an IDC Australia report, Nokia's Symbian OS has been overtaken by Apple with the Symbian losing 9.5 percent of the market share per quarter. Apple holds 40 percent of the smartphone market in Australia with Android in the second place with 30 percent of the market and Symbian coming in a distant third with only 22 percent of the market.

The decline is another setback to the beleaguered Finnish phone manufacturer. For 10 years Nokia has been the favored choice of phone users until the emergence of Apple in 2008 which according to IDC, had 8.4 percent of the market. Nokia had 71.4 percent. A year later Nokia's share dramatically dropped to 58.4 percent while Apple rose to 25.6 percent. The trend continued last year as Nokia's share dropped to 38.9 percent and Apple and Android rose to 32.6 and 16.5 percent respectively.

This year marks the first time Apple has unseated Nokia at the top of the charts. The top three handset makers are Apple, Nokia and Samsung.

Nokia may have lost the lead in the Australian market but globally the phone manufacturer still has the biggest shares. According to Gartner the first quarter of 2011 had Nokia as the market leader with 25.1 percent share, Samsung was number two with 16.1 percent, LG third with 5.6 and Apple in fourth place with 3.9 percent of the market share.

Nokia will still have to face the overwhelming pressure from the iOS and Android. Consumers are no longer interested in the Symbian and are instead flocking to other manufacturers. Nokia has released the new N9 smartphone in hopes of luring back the market but instead of the phone being released with the Windows Phone OS it had the open-source MeeGo platform.

Nokia Australia managing director, Chris Carr, said in response to questions about Nokia giving up the number one position to Apple: "I can't quantify or comment on the IDC figures because I haven't seen them and I don't know what their references are."