The fight was supposed to be between Apple Inc. and Google Inc.'s Android, with the Cupertino, California-based company leading race with its revolutionary and elegantly designed products. It should have been a three-way race, but Microsoft Corp.'s Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates missed the boat after they killed the Courier, a dual touch-screen touch enabled tablet which was ready in early 2010 when the iPad was just unveiled.

Now, Android has emerged as the top platform for smartphones, taking 50% of the market. In tablets, Android devices have gained ground against Apple, taking 26% of the market, a double digit growth from last year when the iPad took over 90% of the market.

While the Android device-makers comprise Motorola Mobility, HTC, and ZTE, among others, one name stands out: Samsung Electronics.

"Ongoing legal and media battles between Apple and its current closest competitor, Samsung, kept the top two pad vendors in the spotlight over the course of Q3," said Canalys Analyst Tim Coulling. "The result is that the pad market is being portrayed as very much a two-vendor race, with Samsung benefitting the most from the extra publicity on the global stage. In reality though, competition is intensifying as more vendors enter the market and seek to capitalize on growth opportunities."

Apple doesn't need the extra publicity. Apple is the world's most valuable brand. It's the world's most valuable tech company, and it reports record earnings quarter after quarter, based on industry-high margins of 40%. Even if it recycles an old design and have a device that has a smaller screen, and doesn't have 4G LTE, Apple still has a record launch for the iPhone 4S. Apple's iPhone 4S, which had lukewarm reviews from critics, sold 4 million units in its first three days. It took Samsung more than three months to sell the same number of units of its most popular smartphone ever, the Galaxy S2.

Talking about Samsung, it would have struggled to avoid using red ink at the bottom of its financial statements as its liquid-crystal-display and consumer-products divisions have been struggling. But Samsung recorded $3.11 billion of net profit in the third quarter primarily from the rise of its cellphone and smartphone business.

After Apple sued Samsung in more than two dozen countries in three continents for slavishly imitating the design and functionality of the iPad and the iPhone, the Korean electronics giant has grabbed the headlines and had many asking, what does Samsung have that made it earn Apple's wrath?

Well, Samsung actually has devices that even could surpass Apple in terms of specs. Its Galaxy S2 has a bigger and brighter screen (4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus), a faster processor (1.2 GHz dual-core ARM processor), and bigger RAM (1 GB) than the iPhone 4. Its Galaxy Nexus can also compete with the iPhone 4S as the phone co-developed by Google has a 4.65-inch 1,280×720-pixel Super AMOLED HD with curved glass screen, has 4G connectivity, and runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android platform. For tablets, Samsung has the Galaxy 10.1, the Galaxy 7.0 Note, and the Galaxy 7.7 against the 9.7-inch iPad.

The fight Apple between Samsung is not the case of a bully hitting a new kid in the mobile phone arena. Samsung, which produces the chips and screens for the iPhone, actually has a bigger mobile phone business than the Steve Jobs-founded company. Latest figures from IDC say that for mobile phones (which comprise the voice-centric feature phones and smartphones), Samsung actually is second only to Nokia worldwide, outpacing the market with 87.8 phones (22.3% market share) shipped in the third quarter. Apple on the other than is fourth in the market with a market share of 4.3% after selling 17.1 million units of the iPhone in the period.

Excluding basic phones, according to Strategy Analytics, Samsung overtook Apple in smartphone shipments with 27.8 million units compared to only 17.1 million for Apple, making the Korean device maker the world's number one smartphone vendor. In the U.S., the world's largest smartphone market, Apple did not take the top spot in its own turf. Taiwan-based HTC actually shipped 5.7 million smartphones, compared to second-placer Samsung's 4.9 million units and Apple's 4.5 million.

As to tablets, Apple's iPad shipments were up 166%, with 11 million sold in the third quarter. But Apple's worldwide market share fell from 96% in Q3 2010 to 67% in Q3 2011 as a result of increasing competition from vendors such as Samsung and others.

Apple actually had a rare fumble in the third quarter. It broke a four-year tradition by not releasing a new iPhone at its June developers' conference. The hype for the fifth generation iPhone drove consumers to postpone purchases. The result was Apple failing to beat Wall Street expectations of more than 20 million iPhones sold in the quarter.

In addition, a possible mistake for Apple is its decision to release an upgrade to the iPhone 4 rather than a phone with an all new design (the iPhone 5). While the iPhone 4S shattered launch records, it remains to be seen whether the device would have staying power. The iPhone 4S went on sale just days after people paid tribute to Apple ex-CEO Steve Jobs.

Apple is facing a more competitive market in the coming months with the arrival of Nokia's Windows 7 Phone models (starting with Lumia 800) and new offerings by Samsung (Galaxy Note and Galaxy Nexus), Motorola (Droid RAZR) and others. While the iPhone 4S's digital assistant has impressed, Apple has had to fend off negative publicity in the past few days. Although Apple has been known to be having top-notch hardware and software engineers, many users have reported lower-than-expected battery life of the device, among other issues.

In tablets, Amazon will be a threat to Apple. Amazon is expected to have a major impact with its new Kindle Fire, priced at an extremely aggressive $199, which is 60% cheaper than the $499 entry-level iPad. Canalys predicts that the combination of a low price point and extensive video, audio and other content will propel Kindle Fire shipments to more than 2 million in the fourth quarter, with Amazon taking second place in the United States.

But analysts believe that Apple will turn out fine, in the near term.

"Apple did not stir the usual excitement levels in the industry with the announcement of the iPhone 4S, but that was never likely to dampen volumes, due to pent up demand from the later than expected launch and the addition of Sprint as a third carrier,' said Palo Alto-based Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones. "Early iPhone 4S sales have shown this is the case, and we expect to see a strong Q4 for Apple."

At this point, we have Apple struggling to meet lofty expectations quarter after quarter. "The company has to constantly set records just to meet expectations," says brokerage firm BGC's Colin W. Gillis.

New Apple CEO Tim Cook has great plans for Apple. The supply-chain genius is aiming for a greater presence in China, which has almost 1 billion wireless subscribers. And there are unconfirmed reports that Apple is launching a cheaper tablet, the iPad mini and a low-cost iPhone in order to boost its presence in emerging markets.

Apple will be launching the iPhone 4S in Hong Kong next week, and in China later this month. But Siri, the main draw for the latest iPhone, doesn't recognize Cantonese and Mandarin, CNBC points out.

Of course, there's Samsung getting the free publicity that it's a deserving alternative to Apple.