According to a report from industry insiders, Samsung beat Apple's third quarter results for smartphone sales for the first time. According to Apple's most recent earnings report, they sold 17.1 Million iPhones in Q3. Samsung doesn't publish specific smartphone sales numbers; however, a source from the WSJ was able to tally up the results and put the Korean manufacturer at over 20 Million smartphones for the same period.
The last sales report in quarter 2 was very close with Samsung coming just shy of matching Apple's numbers, so this new report isn't surprising. Here's a quote from the SlashGear article with Apple's CEO Tim Cook's take on the subject,
With the recent announcement of the Galaxy Nexus and Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung's market pressure will only continue to mount against Apple.Apple CEO Tim Cook blamed media hype around the iPhone 5 earlier this week for the company’s performance in Q3, which fell short of market expectations. Speaking during the financial results call, Cook suggested that “speculation reached extreme highs” about the prospect of a considerably redesigned iPhone featuring, among other things, a larger display and an all-metal, teardrop shaped casing. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer later insisted that the “biggest impact [on performance] was the rumors, which were very pervasive.”
These results from both Samsung and Apple have firmly shoved Nokia, once the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world, into third place. In fact, Nokia's sales for the third quarter slid dramatically downward by 38 percent. Nokia is banking on the idea that the Windows Phone 7 OS will rescue them.
Source: Android.net via SlashGear