Samsung is now the No: 1 phone manufacturer in the world

There’s a lot of Samsung news on Android Community lately, but can you blame us? Sammy seems to bring out a new smartphone every week, and their high-end devices like the Galaxy Note and the upcoming Galaxy S III are among the most coveted worldwide. A milestone that Samsung’s been working towards for years has finally been passed: they’ve unseated Nokia as the number one phone manufacturer on the planet. According to IHS iSuppli, Samsung sold 25.4% of the mobile phones (including smartphones and “feature phones”) in the first quarter of 2012.

By contrast, the incumbent Nokia sold just 22.5%. Their 2011 decision to switch to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform has resulted in lukewarm sales in the high-profit smartphone market. European carriers (along with more than a few end users) have stated that Nokia would be better positioned with Android, an OS that’s allowed Samsung to dominate in the smartphone market. The closest OS competitor is iOS, which admittedly outsells Samsung Android phones (but not Android phones overall) with a worldwide phone share of 9.5%.

As far as total units go, Samsung shipped a whopping 92 million total phones in the first quarter, with 32 million of them being smartphones. Nokia is behind with 83 million units total. All major manufacturers are actually down in phone shipments from the same period in 2011, but the redistribution of sales and shipments puts Samsung on top by a healthy margin. Apple is still hanging on to the single-company smartphone lead selling 35 million iPhones in the same time period.