With every major company in the world posting its quarterly results last week, Juniper Research has taken a look at the two biggest players in the smartphone market – Samsung and Apple.

First, however, a look at the bigger picture: overall smartphone shipments in Q3 rose by 37 per cent year-on-year, to 157m – and Juniper expects the total number to be close to 650m by the end of the year. Thats a tenth of the worlds population.

Samsung shipped more than 56m smartphones in Q3, well over double the amount it achieved in the same period a year earlier. It now has a 36 per cent market share, bolstered by the sales of the Galaxy III, which shifted 20m units in just over three months after its May launch.

Apple, meanwhile, managed to reverse the dip in iPhone sales that took place during the same period last year, largely thanks to the launch of the iPhone 5. It came late in the quarter, but its launch weekend alone accounted for over 5m shipped units – nearly 20 per cent of Apples sales for the entire quarter.