Samsung has finally slam-dunked Nokia to become the world’s #1 mobile phone Company.For more than a decade Nokia has held the coveted #1 slot for mobile phone sales. Aow according to analytics company IHS, Samsung will finish 2012 with 29 percent market share while Nokia slumps to 24% with sales made up primarily of cheap bottom end mobile handsets that are popular in third world countries.

12 months ago Nokia had 30% share of the global market.

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“The competitive reality of the mobile phone market in 2012 was ‘live by the smartphone; die by the smartphone,'” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS.

During the past quarter Samsung has sold 98 million mobile phones of which 55 million were smartphones.

In comparison Nokia only managed to manufacture and sell 7.2 million smartphones.

Apple has grabbed third place with 10 percent share of the global market.

IHS attributed Nokia’s declining performance to the change in direction to Windows 8 smartphones that are not proving popular with consumers.

Samsung saw its smartphone shipments rise 8 percent in 2011 while Nokia saw the biggest dip in its smartphone shipments to just 5 percent, which was an 11 percent decrease over 2011.

Apple has 20 percent of the total smartphone market.

HTC has 5 percent of the smartphone market.