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 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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According to ABI Research, mobile marketing stands to benefit greatly from the advent of Near field communications (NFC) technology.

ABI Research’s new study, “NFC Tags,” forecasts the demand and value of the primary applications for NFC tags, including smart posters, information pick-up, check-in, infotainment, and personalization, and other non-payment services.

The study shows that smart posters and mobile marketing are the greatest opportunity for service providers and manufacturers of NFC tags; they account for over half of shipments to date and are expected to be the fastest growing segment, accounting for 70% of shipments in 2016, the report reveals.

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For those of us in the US, smartphones are dominated by iOS and Android, but for the rest of the world Nokia continues to be a major player.  Still the company has taken a backseat to Apple and Google in recent years, but new data out from mobile monetization provider Inneractive suggests the company might be working on a major comeback.

The industry and journalists alike have been impressed with the latest Windows Phone devices coming from Nokia lately, even so-called iOS and Android fanboys, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time rising back to the top.  Looking at recent mobile ad impressions, however, shows massive growth in usage.  Starting in February of this year, mobile ad impressions stemming from Nokia devices have shown double-digit growth each and every month, which is substantial considering it was double-digit declines leading up to February.

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Mobile app usage continue to reach new highs in the United States. On Thursday, the latest data from Flurry Analytics, which tracks more than 110,000 mobile apps on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and J2ME, showed that approximately 20 million Americans access mobile applications on an hourly basis between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.

Just how big of an audience is that really? Flurry describes this massive user base this way: “That’s already the equivalent of 17 American Idol finales each day, or more than 6,200 American Idol finales per year.”

“Our analysis shows that, compared to relative TV viewing and Internet usage, mobile app usage is higher from 6 am to 6 pm,” the Flurry report reads. “And while the relative percent of television viewers surpasses that of mobile app users during prime-time, mobile app usage continues to climb until 9 pm, exceeding relative Internet usage throughout the prime-time window.”

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In its latest report, mobile analytics firm Distimo details the localization of mobile apps and mobile app stores to try and find the percentage of apps that are only popular in one specific country or region, as well as those that are popular on a global level.

The report shows that 27% of the most popular apps in Apple’s App Store for iPhone are only popular in one specific country.  Meanwhile, Nokia’s Ovi Store has the highest proportion of apps published in just one country (29.4%) while the App Store for iPad has the lowest (3.4%).

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According to a new report from Research2Guidance, apps on Nokia’s Ovi App Store are seeing significantly higher download rates than Apple’s App Store.  Before getting too excited, however, it’s important to put this into perspective.

The research firm rates the amount of times a single app was downloaded on average and found that, on Nokia’s Ovi Store, the same app was downloaded 160% more times than on Apple’s App Store.  Apple has nearly 10 times the amount of apps that the Ovi Store currently has, however, and it appears that the discovery issue that’s plagued the App Store as it’s grown larger and larger continues to hurt developers eager for downloads.

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