According to the published findings this week by prominent research firm IDC, the smartphone market hit all-time quarterly highs due to seasonal strength and a wider variety of offerings.

After a comprehensive review of fourth quarter 2011 earnings, IDC found that it is Apple – not Samsung – that claimed the top spot as the globe’s biggest smartphone maker.

Apple’s 37 million iPhone sales during the last quarter of 2011 was enough to secure top honors for the venerable Cupertino, California-based tech giant.

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On Monday, The NPD Group reported its latest findings, which show that Apple leaped past Samsung and LG to become the best-selling U.S. handset brand in the fourth quarter of 2011.

“Attracted by a faster processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent, most iPhone buyers paid a premium for the iPhone 4S, making it the top-selling handset in Q4,” said Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence for The NPD Group. “The iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75 percent, and outsold the iPhone 3GS, available for free on AT&T, five to one.”

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On Friday, comScore released the latest data from the comScore MobiLens service, which reports key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending December 2011.

The study found that Google Android strengthened its lead in the smartphone market during the period to capture a 47.3 percent market share.

All told, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices during the three-month period ending in December.

97.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.

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A new report published Friday from Distimo provides an overview of the effects when an application is featured in the Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad and Google Android Market.

One of the key findings of the report shows that the average revenue rose by 41% in the Apple App Store for iPhone when looking at those applications that were already among the 100 highest grossing applications in any category, on the first day of the sale.

Moreover, Distimo’s report finds, the revenue during the whole sale increased by 22%. In the Apple App Store for iPad those figures were +52% and +19%, respectively. In the Google Android Market on the first day the revenue increased by 7%, and during the whole sale increased by 29%.

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The U.S. mobile advertising market is on fire, growing faster than even the most optimistic of industry analysts had projected in recent months.

Fueled in large part by Google’s mobile search advertising business, the industry reached new heights in 2011 and 2012 is already shaping up to put 2011 to shame.

Aided greatly by the surge in smartphone ownership and the ubiquitous dominance of mobile ad networks – with Google’s AdMob, Apple’s iAd, and Millennial Media chief among them – new estimates from eMarketer place mobile advertising’s growth off the charts.

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Apple may be the dominant headline stealer in the realm of tablet computers, but today Android is taking center stage.

Based on the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments reached 27 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011. As a result, Android claimed a record 39 percent global share.

Still, Apple held on to a 58 percent market share, although that once sizable lead continue to diminish.

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On Wednesday, the tech space was buzzing with news that appears to suggest that Apple has officially surpassed Samsung as the world’s biggest smartphone maker.

Fewer than twenty-hours removed from the company’s record quarterly earnings report, analysts viewing the cold, hard data say Apple has likely bumped Samsung out of the top spot by a sizable margin.

Last night, Apple revealed sales of 37 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011 alone.

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