Apple may have just become the world’s largest smartphone vendor. It’s worth reading that sentence again, because it’s a bone fide bombshell. This is a company that only entered the market in 2007, has just one device (the iPhone), prices at a premium, and has yet to make major inroads into high-volume markets such as China (by the company's own admission it is only "scratching the surface right now").

But in its latest earnings, Apple noted that iPhone shipments had grown by a record 142 percent year-on-year to reach 20.34 million for the quarter ended 25 June. This also marked a sequential (quarter-on-quarter) rise of 9 percent in a period that traditionally sees the Apple faithful curb their spending in anticipation of a new upgraded model (an announcement on the iPhone 5 is due in the next few weeks, the firm hinted yesterday). iPad sales were equally impressive, hitting 9.25 million, up an eye-watering 183 percent from a year earlier.

But let’s go back to that iPhone shipments figure. According to IDC’s global smartphone numbers for Q1, which placed Apple at number two on 18.7 million units, only Nokia was selling over 20 million smartphones in this quarter (24.2 million). The struggling Finnish giant is due to announce its Q2 numbers tomorrow (21 July) and the smart money is on the firm losing its smartphone crown after a decade of market leadership. In fact, there has never been another market leader in smartphones, with the Finnish firm usually credited with starting the market from scratch.

Up until Q1, Nokia’s smartphone shipments had remained steady even as its market share was chipped away at. However, warnings of a bleak short-term future as it transitions its smartphones from Symbian to Windows Phones – plus some alarming reports of “mismanagement” in its channel in China – could see quarterly smartphone sales sink below 20 million when Nokia reports tomorrow, conceding the crown to Apple.

A more potent threat to Apple’s dominance in this space is Samsung. IDC put the South Korean vendor as only fourth-placed in smartphones in Q1 on 10.8 million units, behind Nokia, Apple and RIM. But Samsung has a wider range of devices and price points than Apple, which experts believe could make it the main beneficiary of defections from Nokia and RIM (the BlackBerry-maker appears on the verge of its own Nokia-style troubles).

Samsung reports its Q2 numbers later this month and it would take a stunning performance to break 20 million smartphone shipments for the three-month period, which would require almost doubling sales from Q1. The firm has tweaked its smartphone sales forecasts upwards recently, but is still guiding for around 60 million for the full year.

So with Nokia and Samsung yet to announce their comparable figures, they won’t be popping corks in Cupertino just yet. But you can bet they’ve got some (no doubt extremely expensive) bubbly on ice.

The editorial views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and will not necessarily reflect the views of the GSMA, its Members or Associate Members