Apple’s third quarter sales for its only cellphone, the iPhone, have vaulted the company into a top ten list of phone suppliers, ousting BlackBerry maker RIM in the process, research group Strategy Analytics says. A Thursday report said Apple’s increase to 6.9 million handsets shipments found Apple, along with Samsung and Sony Ericsson, as one of the only major phone makers on the list to increase its market share during the third quarter of 2008.

Apple held 2.3 percent of the cellphone market in the quarter and jumped from well outside the top ten to sixth place, trailing behind LG (7.6 percent), Motorola (8.4 percent), Sony Ericsson (8.5), Samsung (17.1) and Nokia (38.9). The result is considered impressive considering Apple has only a single product to offer in the market, as well as its entrance into the industry just one and a half years ago.

The iPhone’s success is though to have likely cost sales at Nokia, LG and Motorola, whose sales all fell. The research company noted Apple still has a long way to go in order to match its closest rival ahead of it, LG, at 23 million units sold in the third quarter.

Nokia, they noted, is not taking full advantage of the quickly-growing smartphone market in the US by not making all of its high-end devices available stateside. The company instead prefers to launch some models only as unlocked devices and isn’t set to release its first touchscreen phone, the 5800 XpressMusic, until 2009 for most areas.

Overall handset sales, which reached about 303 million during the third quarter, represented a five percent gain over the same time period last year, while growth was at a five-year low.