Samsung muscled its way again on top of the global smartphone market by capturing 29.1 per cent of the pie in the first quarter of the current year and effectively overtaking its chief rival, Apple.

Analytic firm IDC reported on Tuesday that the South Korean tech giant shipped more than 42 million smartphones worldwide in the period, bannered by its flagship Galaxy SII unit with ample support from the company's high-end and mass-focused handsets.

Apple, which again reported in April record-breaking quarterly results, saw its smartphone market share expanding by full six per cent in the same quarter to 24.2 per cent or total shipments of more than 35 million units in the period but the advance, IDC noted, fell short of actually besting Samsung's numbers.

Together, the two companies seemed to have established a duopoly of the lucrative mobile phone market by gobbling up more than 50 per cent of the smartphone push in the quarter, which grew by 42.5 per cent from January through March this year, IDC said.

Samsung's rising fortunes in the overall mobile phone industry, which shipped 398.4 million in the quarter, further boosted its Q1 earnings, which the company reported last month had climbed up by 82 per cent.

Those numbers cemented Samsung's reputation as one of the majors in the elite tech world, with the company rubbing shoulders with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Apple, the latter this year became the world's most valuable company, with its current value pegged above the $600 billion mark.

Samsung's hot streak was complemented by comScore's new survey, which showed that Google's Android mobile platform has increased its dominance in the U.S. market, settling at 51 percent by the end March after securing more than 47 percent of the American market in December.

Samsung's bestselling smartphones and tablet computers stand on the mobile OS.

Apple on the other hand rests on the 30.7 percent hold on the U.S. mobile operating system rivalry, comScore said, inching up from the 29.7 percent the company recorded in the last quarter of 2011.

Samsung's surge, analysts said, has waylaid erstwhile industry leaders, with the biggest casualty emerging as Nokia, which finally relinquished in the March quarter its throne to Samsung as the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

According to IDC, Samsung shipped out 93.8 million units of combined feature phones and smartphones in the past 12 months leading to the end of March while Nokia only pushed out from its assembly plants 82.7 million units in the same period.

"Samsung has used its established relationships with carriers in a mix of economically diverse markets to gain share organically and at the expense of former high fliers such as Nokia," IDC analyst senior research analyst Kevin Restivo was quoted as saying by BGR News in the report.

"The halcyon days of rapid growth in the smartphone market have been good to Samsung," Mr Restivo added.

And more good news is expected to greet Samsung throughout the year as the company is all geared up for the May launch of the new Galaxy SIII, bearing improved features and functions from its predecessors and is anticipated to tussle it rough with the iPhone 4S, which Apple said was snapped up by more than 35 million buyers worldwide as of the March quarter.

"The contest between Apple and Samsung will bear close observation as hotly-anticipated new models are launched," IDC said.