Samsung overtakes Apple as world’s largest smartphone vendor

It looks like Apple’s reign as the world’s largest smartphone vendor was short-lived. It’s been reported today that Samsung has overtaken Apple with its last quarter sales to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor. According to Samsung’s Q3 2011 financial reports, the Korean OEM managed to ship out 27.8 million smartphones, taking 23.8% of the market. Apple only managed 17.1 million shipments which equaled 14.6% of the market. Nokia in the meantime remained in third place.

While things might look rosy for Samsung at this point in time, the future can be very different – seeing how Apple has managed to successfully stop the sales of certain Samsung Android devices in different parts of the world. And let’s not forget, Apple’s ever growing list of patents, including the recently granted slide to unlock patent which can cause a lot of headache for Samsung and other Android manufacturers as well.

For what it’s worth, it’s always interesting to see how the sales of smartphones are doing in this ever changing and hostile environment. Let’s see what happens next.