Apple's iPhone could extend its holiday cheer as recent figures show that it was the highest selling smartphone in the market for the last holiday season.

Apple just released the company's holiday report and it showed that the profit generated from the past holiday season more than doubled. The report also revealed that there were 37 million iPhones that were sold for the past holiday season thus bringing the total iPhone sales to 183 million since it was first launched in the year 2007. The release of the newest iPhone version known as iPhone 4S was a major contributor as to why many people were inclined to purchase iPhone during the holiday season. Initially, many people were disappointed with the release of iPhone 4S because many were anticipating about the possible release of iPhone 5. Despite the initial disappointment, many people were still fans of iPhone 4S after it was released last October.

U.S. carriers also testified the strength of iPhone 4S during the holiday season. Verizon Wireless, the largest network provider in the U.S. said that 56 percent of the 7.7 million smartphones that were sold were iPhones. Meanwhile, AT&T Inc., the second largest network provider in the U.S. also revealed that out of the 9.4 million devices activated by the company, 7.6 million units were iPhones. According to experts, Apple's growth would still continue as it becomes worldwide. Brian White, a former analyst from Ticonderoga Securities LLC mentioned that smartphone sales from China would help boost iPhone's dominance in the smartphone market.

Apple CEO Tim Cook remarked that the response from customers regarding iPhone 4S was "breathtaking". Cook added that the company is producing a record number of iPhones but is struggling to keep up with the global demand of iPhones stating that "as it turns out, we didn't bet high enough.''

Android, Apple's biggest rival, has a long way to go before beating Apple in the smartphone battle. Samsung Electronics Co., a Korean-based company was ranked as second place for smartphone shipments. Samsung has partnered up with Google in utilizing Android as the smartphone's operating software. Samsung was able to capture the interest of customers through their Galaxy line of smartphones. Other companies that are also Android-based like HTC and LG Electronics were ranked lower in terms of smartphone sales. This was shown in the financial statements presented by both companies. HTC and LG Electronics expressed decline in smartphone sales as well as profit. In order to stop this trend from continuing, both companies are implementing the same strategy with Apple which is focusing on just a small number of products instead of offering a whole line of gadgets.

There are many experts that view Google's Android as the next big thing in smartphones due to its "open source" policy. Despite that, there are also some experts that are not convinced with the prediction of Android taking over. Ramon Llamas, a senior analyst at market-research firm IDC remarked, "For the Android smartphone vendors to come out with something, they need to be very brave."