Is this the beginning of the end for BlackBerry? Manufacturer, Research In Motion lost nearly two thirds of the US smartphone market share, year on year for the same period. HTC has taken a clear lead in the US smartphone market, and it’s been closely followed by Samsung, who just last week, surpassed Apple in total worldwide smartphone shipments.

Market research and analysis firm, Canalys, yesterday reported that HTC shipped 5,7 million own-brand smartphones, and 70 000 T-Mobile-branded handsets during the last quarter in the US.

Samsung was a close second – shipping 4,9 million, and Apple took third spot with 4,6 million iPhones shipped.

Of course, Apple can’t be slated too hard here because many people would have waited to see what the next iPhone was going to reveal.

RIM, who recently went down for three days, saw sales volumes decline 58% from a year ago. It’s US market share slipped from 24 per cent in Q3 2010, to a paltry nine per cent in Q3 2011.

Canalys analyst Chris Jones:

However you count it, HTC has become a deserved leader in the US smartphone market. This is an awesome achievement for HTC, which has built a premium brand in a highly competitive market in just a few short years.

It now has a strong range of 4G Android products, with devices ranged by each of the major carriers, and offers some of the most compelling and differentiated products found on the platform today.

The BlackBerry smartphones are most popular for their messenger service, and this did account for growth in regions like the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.

But, it remains to be seen what the worldwide October outage will do to sales for the next quarter.

Here are the US numbers:

RIM’s decline… Quite obvious

You can read the full Canalys press release on Boy Genius Report.

[Sources: BGR, BusinessInsider]