Earlier this week, Samsung announced that it had sold 3 million Galaxy S Phones in the U.S. and 7 million overall.  That sounds like it was enough to propel it past HTC and  to become the number one global Android phone manufacturer.

A chart put together by Asymco showing Gartner’s estimates is at right.

Samsung’s smartphone market share reached 10 percent in the third quarter of 2010. Samsung sold close to 1 million bada devices in the third quarter of 2010, and 6.6 million Android phones, making Samsung the top Android seller.

HTC and Samsung are both Windows Phone 7 phone vendors as well, while Motorola(MOT) and Sony (SNE) are taking a wait-and-see approach.

As for smartphone operating systems, Android opened up a double digit lead over RIM (RIMM) and (almost) Apple (AAPL) and has astronomically grown since this time last year, where it barely registered above the others’ delineation at 3.5%.

Speaking of the others, Generic Linux and Microsoft’s (GOOG) Windows Mobile both lost significant share.  Linux manufacturers are likely being drawn to Android while Microsoft has just rebooted its smartphone business and only sold legacy phones in Q3.

That’s not to say Blackberry and Apple’s iOS did poorly.  Both grew their unit shipments, Apple at double the rate of RIM.  Nokia’s Symbian remained the leader in Smartphones globally, with 36% of the market, but that gap is narrowing, as Android nips at Nokia’s heals.  Raw numbers below the fold:

 

The overall numbers were interesting, with Nokia keeping a big lead in overall sales (which include low margin feature phones) but largley flat year-over-year, only gaining 4 million units to go to 117.5 million.

Samsung remained number two and took 17% of the market, while LG dropped in shipments by 4.5 million units over the previous year’s third quarter.  HTC was the big winner in overall sales, almost tripling its year-ago quarter.