Samsung Doubles Smartphone Shipments of Apple

Samsung, the South Korea based electronics giant said its shipments for smartphones number more than 52 million for the recently ended second quarter. That number was more than double the number of iPhones Apple shipped during the same period, according to industry research.

Worldwide Samsung shipped the huge quantity of smartphones, which also outpaced the worldwide shipments of Blackberry by Research In Motion, which only made 7.4 million shipments in the same period. Nokia shipped more than 10.2 million handsets, across the globe in the same time period.

However, before too many people start speculating about the surge in Samsung smartphone sales, it must be pointed out that the iPhone shipments are actual sales. Shipments for other handsets like Samsung or Nokia are not 100% sales. However, in Apple’s case they are all sales.

Nonetheless, the numbers are impressive for Samsung and over the last few quarters, the two companies have been going back and forth on owning the lead for shipments. In 2011’s third quarter, Samsung took the lead with 23.6 million units shipped. Apple took the lead back in the fourth quarter of 2011 with a market share of 25%. In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung took the lead again.

The competition over the success between the two companies has been extended into legal battles around the world, as well. Both Apple and Samsung have sued the other over patent infringement and Apple has accused Samsung of design infringement and of destroying emails that contained important evidence in one of their court battles in the U.S.

In this past quarter, overall global smartphone shipments increased by 27 million units over the same period last year.