How profitable the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy Note 2 are for Samsung? It is widely believed that the South Korean tech giant's $US8.3 billion of operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 was largely delivered by its mobile division business.

Releasing early figures for Q4 2012, Samsung indicated that its quarterly profit surged by 89 per cent after the December quarter, thanks mostly to its global sales of mobile devices, memory chips, flat panels and television units.

While the company opted to withhold its net income for now, analysts are convinced that the world's biggest phone maker is breaking the path for a record 2012 haul, which will be confirmed once the officials results are released later this month.

When Apple's iPhone 5 was unveiled in September 2012, analysts were quick to offer that the handset will likely catapult the U.S. company into unprecedented heights, probably reaching the 100 million mark in total unit sales for the latest Apple smartphone.

Yet according to The Associated Press (AP), Apple only managed to push out 45 million iPhone by the end of December, citing the estimates provided by Daewoo Securities.

Samsung, on the other hand, sold some 62 million Galaxy smartphones from October to December last year, again emerging as the top smartphone player in the quarter and disproving analysts' take that Apple will end 2012 by regaining the post it lost to Samsung six quarters ago.

"Samsung was the major beneficiary of slower-than-expected sales of Apple's iPhone 5," Bloomberg News reported James Song, an analyst at Daewoo Securities, as saying.

Early setbacks greeted the iPhone 5 as consumers complained of its funky map application, partly an end-result of Apple's decision to dump Google Map in favour of its in-house navigational suite.

Apple was forced to issue a public apology on the matter, fire some of its key executives and scramble to bring in a fix as many buyers were drawn to Android smartphones, which enjoy unfettered access to Google's popular apps, Google Map including.

The clear winner, obviously, is Samsung, capping 2012 as the year it climbed much higher and outpaced its rivals. The past 12 months saw Samsung besting Apple and Nokia and becoming the biggest mobile phone maker in the world.

The company also captured the biggest pie of the global smartphone market, gobbling 28 per cent of the overall share, according to figures provided by IHS iSuppli. The climb was astonishing as Samsung's smartphone market hold was only pegged at around three per cent in 2009, AP said in a report.

The former number one, Apple, managed to end its 2012 smartphone tussle with Samsung with a 20 per cent grip on the market, settling for the second spot after years of dominance in a market it claimed it reinvented.