Former mobile phones leader Nokia remains a king on its own right, but its current fiefdom appears not large enough for the struggling firm to reverse flagging fortunes, reports said.

Research firm Localytics recently pointed to the Finnish tech company as the leader in smartphones, with a dominance of 59 per cent as of the end of July 2012.

Its rule, however, is limited on the Windows Phone mobile platform, which Localytics researchers said has been the case since Nokia launched its Lumia smartphone lines in November 2011.

Nokia's market share has been above the 50 per cent mark since the second quarter of the current year, underscoring its mastery of the operating system that Microsoft has already overhauled and is set for debut by late October 2012.

Reports by tech blog site InformationWeek clearly indicated that when it comes to Windows phone, Nokia is the runaway global winner, beating out the likes of Samsung and HTC.

HTC, however, stole the thunder from Nokia when it comes to the U.S. market, basing on the Localytics data, which is a market prominently on the radar of the Finnish company as it implements measures to regain its old glory at the soonest possible time.

U.S. sales of Nokia Lumia were last accounted at 32 per cent in July or four points behind HTC's 36 per cent in the same period, according to InformationWeek.

Yet its leadership in the Windows smartphone race may not count too much for Nokia as analytic firm IDC reported that within the same time grid, the platform remains too far a laggard from its competitors.

As Android and iOS continue to eat up more than half of the smartphone market, IDC said Windows phones were locked at around 3.5 per cent.

Proof of this were the results published by current handset leaders Apple and Samsung in the past two quarters within 2012, which showed the two companies completely eating up their rivals by combining total sales that easily breached the 100 million threshold.

Samsung, in fact, stripped Apple and Nokia of their crown in March as the South Korean romped its way to the lead of overall mobile phone and smartphone sales on the strength of its Galaxy product lines, which come both in affordable models and high-end units.

Global consumers gravitated toward Samsung's Galaxy Ace, Packet and Y during the first half, which in turn snatch the spotlight from affordable Nokia phones that used to be the preferred only a few years ago.

At the same time, Samsung's Galaxy S2 and S3, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Nexus proved formidable enough to be pitted against Apple's iPhone, effectively reducing the wide gap between the Asian firm and the American firm.

And the whole equation counts not Nokia, which faces the prospects of tussling it out with new products that will be launched by Apple and Samsung later this year, around the same time that Microsoft plans to roll out the new Windows 8.

Analysts said Windows 8 offers the final hope for Nokia and the company can only wish that its present edge in the platform will be sustained as the new OS marches its way into the market and possibly permeate its new footprints to as wide area as possible.

That likelihood may take a bit of a time, experts said and which was agreed upon by Microsoft, leaving Nokia in the balance as time is not exactly on its side at the moment.

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