Apple drops a gear, overtakes Samsung as largest smartphone vendor in the world

Strategy Analytics’ latest report shows that Apple has taken the coveted top spot by overtaking Samsung of South Korea, effectively transforming Cupertino to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor in terms of volume. In fact, Apple managed to touch 23.9% of the global smartphone market share in Q4 last year, just edging past Samsung’s 23.5% share. Apart from that, Apple managed to ship 37 million units in Q4, which is neck to neck with the figure that Samsung bandied around – 36.5 million units.

According to Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, “while Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20% global share during 2011.” When you take a closer look at Apple’s annual share, it stood at 19%. It would really be interesting to see just whether Apple be able to retain pole position for a long period of time, or is this going to be just a one-off situation.