Samsung Tops Apple in Global Mobile Phone Shipments

Samsung's smartphone shipments soared over the same period last to easily grab the lion's share of the global market, a market researcher said yesterday. While another market researcher put Samsung No.1 in the overall cell phone market. The South Korean electronics giant's share went from 12.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to a whopping 30.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Strategy Analytics.

Apple's growth isn't too shabby either: it jumped from an 18.1 percent share last year (which at that time was larger than Samsung's) to 24.1 percent. Overall global smartphone shipments grew 41 percent annually to reach 145 million units in the first quarter of 2012. More than half of that being Samsung and Apple combined. "Samsung and Apple are outcompeting most of their major rivals and the smartphone market is at risk of becoming a two-horse race," Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.