Nearly all smartphone vendors including Nokia, Apple, Samsung Electronics, HTC and RIM will launch new flagship models in the August-September period, aiming to further ramp up, or halt the decline, of their market share in the fiercely competitive peak season, according to industry sources.

Samsung will officially launch its cross-platform device, the Galaxy Note 2, in Berlin at the end of August. The smartphone will come with a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display, a quad-core Exynos 4 CPU and supports Samsung's S-Pen technology and Android 4.1.

Nokia is expected to unveil its new Windows Phone 8 models at Nokia World 2012 to be held in Helsinki on September 5 and to start delivering the new smartphones by the end of October, the sources noted.

Apple is scheduled to unveil its next-generation iPhone in September, with industry watchers expecting the new device to have a large-size display in an ultra-thin design and supporting LTE and NFC technologies.

Although RIM is not expected to launch BlackBerry 10 models until early 2013, the vendor is expected to release details of the BlackBerry 10 platform to developers and cooperation partners at BlackBerry Jam Americas to be held in San Jose at the end of September. RIM aims to push the BlackBerry 10 to smartphone applications, tablet PCs and to other embedded systems.

Meanwhile, Sony Mobile Communications, Motorola Mobility, and HTC are scheduled to launch Android 4.1 models, featuring quad-core CPUs and display sizes ranging 4.5- to 5-inch, the sources noted.