Samsung has managed to do the impossible! Or at least what was thought to be impossible a few quarters ago. Its flagship Android powered smartphone, the Galaxy S III has managed to trump the mightly Apple iPhone and become the worlds most popular (read most sold) smartphone in the penultimate quarter of 2012. No, we ain’t claiming this. Folks from over at Strategy Analytics – the much talked about analytics firm are the ones who revealed this shocker of a news in their latest report published on November 8.
According to the report, Samsung managed to sell an astounding 18 million Galaxy S III devices in the third quarter of 2012. In comparison, Apple managed to sell 16.2 million iPhone 4S handsets during the same period. Samsung here clearly overtook Apple in terms of sales here – that too by a fair margin of 2 million devices. But hey, there is a catch here!
The sales of Apple’s iPhone 4S plateaued during this period of the year because everyone knew about the imminent arrival of the iPhone 5 – which did eventually arrive on September 21. Now, Samsung was smart enough to capitalise on this vacuum created by the imminent arrival of a new iPhone model and pushed its sales further dring this period.
All said, it is unlikely that Samsung would be able to hold on to this number one spot for the next quarter as well – especially considering the fact that the iPhone 5 sold like hot cakes right after its launch. But then, let us also not forget that Samsung also makes other popular smartphones – like the Galaxy Note 2 for example which sold over 3 million units right after launch.