Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei has leaped ahead of Apple and Nokia to become the Middle East and Africa's (MEA's) second largest smartphone seller behind Samsung.

This is according to research from the International Data Corporation (IDC) which says that Huawei's share of the region's smartphone market jumped from 2% last year to 10% for the second quarter of 2014.

"In the smartphone class, Samsung remains the comfortable leader with 45% of the MEA market, but its share is down 8 points from a year ago," says the IDC in its report.

"At the same time, Huawei's share has jumped from 2% to 10%, putting the vendor in second place, ahead of Apple (8%) and Nokia (6%). BlackBerry continues to suffer, enduring the biggest drop in smartphone market share of all vendors, from over 12% in 2013 to just under 2% this year," says the IDC.

Overall, the IDC says that the "Middle East and Africa (MEA) handset market grew to its largest size in ten quarters in Q2 2014, expanding 27% year on year to total 64 million units."

Breaking down the statistics further, the IDC says Egypt and South Africa recorded year-on-year smartphone shipment growth at 37% and 32% respectively.

In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar respectively recorded growth of 27% and 32% each.

Meanwhile, Nokia continues to dominate the region's feature phone market.

"Nokia is still top with 35% share, although this is down from 47% in Q2 2013," says the IDC.

"Techno, Samsung, and Qmobile (a brand from Pakistan) follow in that order, with shares of 11.5%, 10.7%, and 7.3% respectively, all of which also reflect year-on-year share declines," notes the research firm.