Strong iPhone 4S Sales Put Apple Back On Top of the Smartphone Business

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Two days ago Apple shared with the world its financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2011, reporting a new all-time high company record when it comes to revenue, profits and iOS and Mac OS X device sales.

Apple sold 62 million iOS device during that period, with most of them being iPhones. Out of the 37.04 million iPhones sold, most of them have probably been iPhone 4S units, although the company is still selling the 2009 iPhone 3GS and the 2010 iPhone 4 alongside the new model.

Research firm Strategy Analytics is reporting that Apple may have surpassed Samsung to become, once again, the world’s largest smartphone vendor last quarter. The South Korea company has apparently sold just 36.5 million smartphones in the Christmas quarter, which is more than half a million units less than Apple – although this is an estimated number as Samsung is not making those numbers official any more. Samsung has passed Apple to become the number one smartphone seller in the third quarter, and it looks like these two companies are going to keep fighting for supremacy in this particular niche for some time to come. In fact, overall, Samsung has surpassed Apple when it comes to smartphone sales for 2011, with 97.4 million units compared to 93 million units.

What’s interesting to note in the graph above is Nokia’s decline. The company is clearly unable to fight Apple and Samsung when it comes to smartphone sales. Compared to Q4 2010, when it sold 28.3 million smartphones, Nokia only sold 19.6 million in Q4 2011. Its overall smartphone sales fell from 100.1 million in 2010 to 77.3 million in 2011.

Another interesting figure in the table above is the “others” section. “Others,” including HTC, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, and more, have sold 61.9 million smartphones in Q4 2011 compared to 45.6 million during the same time a year before. But what’s most interesting is the overall smartphone sales for “others”: 220.8 million in 2011, almost 100 million more than the previous year.

What smartphone did you buy last year?