Business

Samsung tops Nokia, Apple

Sure, it’s good to be king. It’s even better to be a king twice over like Samsung.

The South Korean electronics giant has not only toppled the once-mighty Nokia in overall phone sales but has also snatched the smartphone crown from Apple, new research shows.

Samsung is now the world’s biggest cell-phone maker, topping Nokia in worldwide shipments and ending its 14-year run as market leader.

What’s more, Samsung is back on top of Apple in global smartphone shipments, riding consumer hits like the Galaxy Note and Nexus.

Last quarter, Samsung reported 92 million phones shipped, of which more than 40 million were smartphones, according to analysts.

“Samsung is clearly the dominant smartphone player,” said analyst Tony Berkman with ITG Research.

Until the first quarter, Nokia had led the world in overall phone sales for almost 15 years.

In the more lucrative smartphone market, Samsung outsold Apple last quarter, according to ITG Research. Samsung does not break out how many smartphones it sells compared to regular feature phones.

Samsung sold more than 40 million smartphones compared to Apple’s 35.1 million iPhones last quarter, Berkman said.

The title of top smartphone maker comes with major bragging rights. Since the iPhone launched in 2007, Apple has emerged as a unique player in control of both making hardware and designing software.

Samsung uses Google’s Android software in its top smartphones, and is one of dozens of manufacturers building products using Android.

The variety of Android manufacturers has helped Google take market share from Apple, which offers consumers only one —albeit ubiquitous — smartphone.

Still, there is some debate about who took the smartphone crown last quarter, with some analysts declaring Apple the winner. IHS iSuppli issued a report that said Samsung sold only about 32 million smartphones last quarter.

Still, ITG was confident in its figures, saying some rival researchers did not have the same caliber of data. ITG’s figures were in line with those of Strategy Analytics, which reported Samsung sold about 45 million smartphones last quarter.

According to ITG, Samsung rode a string of hot products to beat iPhone sales. Samsung sold about 4 million Galaxy Note devices, a large-screen phone that approaches tablet size, and about 1 million Galaxy Nexus phones. Of its hottest line of phones — the Galaxy SII — 9 million were sold, ITG said.

“They have also done phenomenally on the lower end, where their phones sell for less than half of an unlocked iPhone 4GS,” Berkman said.

Samsung sold more than 6 million Galaxy Ys and more than 5 million Galaxy Aces last quarter, Berkman said.

Samsung rode its products to record profits of $5.15 billion last quarter, although that is still only half of what Apple achieved.