The battle for China is on, and so far Samsung has the advantage over Apple as well as local Chinese companies like Lenovo.
After nearly tripling the amount of smartphones sold in China last year, Samsung has taken the prize as China's number one phone maker.
According to Yonhap News Agency, a newspaper in South Korea, a new research report from Strategy Analytics found that Samsung sold 30.06 million smartphones in China. That's a whopping 20 million phones' increase over the previous year, which saw Samsung sell 10.9 million units.
The report hasn't been made public yet, but if the facts are true, then Samsung has performed an impressive feat by capturing the top spot in China only four years after entering the market. It holds 17.7 percent of the entire market in China, which is now the world's largest smartphone market in the world, meaning that even in the face of such impressive numbers, the company still has plenty of room to grow.
The only thing potentially worrisome could be China's concern that Android is too popular in the country. Considering that Samsung's phones mostly run on Android, it's something to keep an eye on, looking forward.
China's own Lenovo took second place with 13.2 percent, a growth rate of 4 percent over the last year. Apple followed closely behind with 11 percent, a number that Cupertino definitely wants to see go up when it supposedly launches the iPhone mini later this year. Many analysts see a cheaper iPhone as necessary for Apple to compete successfully in emerging markets like China and India.
Meanwhile, Huawei, also a Chinese manufacturer, rounds out the top four with 9.9 percent.
Perhaps even more amazing than Samsung's rise is Nokia's dramatic fall. The company had nearly 30 percent market share during 2011, and in just one year it saw that number to drop all the way to a measly 3.7 percent. At this point, you have to wonder if Windows Phones will be enough to save the company.
