Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (left) with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. There appears to be a new winner in the race for third place in the mobile platform war.

Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems are still on top, but it now looks like more customers are gravitating toward the Windows Phone platform as an alternative to BlackBerry.

BlackBerry released its new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10, early this year, but sales have been disappointing so far. In fact, BlackBerry only shipped 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 devices last quarter.

Meanwhile, Nokia says it shipped 7.4 million of its Lumia smartphones, which run Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. That number was lower than analysts had expected, but still higher than what BlackBerry was able to pull off last quarter.

And even if you count phones running BlackBerry's older operating system, BlackBerry 7, the company only shipped a total of 6.8 million smartphones last quarter.

Plus, Nokia isn't the only company that makes Windows Phones. Samsung and HTC are two other big names in mobile that also make Windows Phone devices. However, unlike Samsung and HTC, Nokia does not make Android devices. Nokia's bet is that Windows Phones are the next big thing and it's pumping all its efforts into the platform.

Nokia also has several different models of its Lumia devices, from the high-end 900-series to low-end models that sell for just a few hundred dollars without a carrier subsidy. It's those cheap phones that help drive a lot of sales, and that demonstrates a larger strategy by Nokia's partner Microsoft to attack the low-end smartphone market since the high-end is so saturated with phones from Samsung, HTC, and Apple.

BlackBerry, on the other hand, only offers one cheaper BlackBerry 10 phone, the Q5, but it has limited availability right now and isn't even sold in the US. Its two other BlackBerry 10 phones are the Z10 and Q10, which are priced in the same top tier as phones like the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S4, and HTC One.