Samsung now ships more smartphones than Apple and Nokia combined

It seems that Santa delivered a lot Samsung (005930) phones over the holiday quarter. According to the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped a whopping 63 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 73% increase from the 36.5 million smartphones it shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011. Samsung’s smartphone shipment market share also rose to 29% on the quarter, larger than the combined market shares of Apple’s (AAPL) 22% and Nokia’s (NOK) 3%. Just one year earlier, Samsung’s market share stood at 23.2%, which at the time trailed Apple’s 23.6% share. Samsung reported yet another record-breaking quarter with a $6.6 billion profit on Friday, so it’s not surprising to see its share of the overall smartphone market has significantly increased over the past year.