Market research firm Gartner on Wednesday released its third-quarter mobile phone sales figures, but there is a little interesting nugget of information that seems to have gone unnoticed.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Gartner picked up on, and pointed out, one of Apple’s strongest advantages in the mobile space — its multi-device strategy. It’s not only the fact that Apple has multiple mobile devices, but also that they all run the same mobile operating system.

“Apple’s dramatic expansion of iOS with the iPad and the continuing success of the iPod Touch are important sales achievements in their own right. But more importantly they contribute to the strength of Apple’s ecosystem and the iPhone in a way that smartphone-only manufacturers cannot compete with,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “To a developer, the iPod Touch and iPhone (and to a lesser extent the iPad) are effectively the same device and a single market opportunity. While Android is increasingly available on media tablets and media players like the Galaxy Player, it lags far behind iOS’s multi-device presence. Apple claims it is activating around 275,000 iOS devices per day on average — that’s a compelling market for any developer. And developers’ applications in turn attract users.”

I’ve said this on many occasions — it’s Apple’s ecosystem that other manufacturers can’t compete with. Beginning with the iTunes infrastructure, and now with the App Store, Apple has a 10 year head start on the competition. That is an advantage that is not easily overcome.

Apple is now the fourth largest handset maker with 3.2 percent market share, up from 2.3 percent from the third-quarter last year. Nokia still leads the way with a 28.2 percent share, down from 36.7 percent in 2009, followed by Samsung with 17.2 percent, down from 19.6 percent in 2009, and LG with a 6.6 percent share, down from 10.3 percent in 2009.