Samsung Electronics Co, the Korea based smartphone maker, is expected to overtake Apple in the fourth quarter of the year, according to market report.

Samsung, the second largest mobile phone manufacturer has announced its income as it topped the charts during the third quarter of the year leaving Apple behind. According to reports Samsung earned a net profit of 2.44 trillion won or $3.09 billion between July and September.

With the success of Samsung, results suggest that it could surpass Apple and will become the leading smartphone maker in the world. Reports said that Samsung shipped nearly 27 million smartphones in the last quarter overtaking Apple with only 17.07 million shipments of Apple devices.

Samsung also announced that the Samsung Galaxy SII and Samsung Galaxy S models have already reached the combined sales of 30 million units. Samsung said that this is the company's milestone after entering a legal battle with Apple over the Galaxy handsets that is claimed by Apple to have cloned the iPhone and iPad.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple handsets will likely to rebound tremendously in the October to December period, though it would not be enough to surpass Samsung's earnings.

Also, most smartphone users are now shifting to Android devices with diverse features, bigger screen size and having the latest technology that can top Apple devices, said Strategy Analytics.

In another report, Samsung said that it ambushed the iPhone 4S launch in Sydney, Australia and placed a pop-up shop just a few meters away from the Apple Store to sell Galaxy S II at a discounted price. Sales were limited to a number of people each day over a period of one week. Even then, iPhone 4S has reported to have sold 1 million units in 24 hours, and hit the 4 million mark in a week.

The comparison of Samsung and Apple is not fair enough though, since Apple has released only one smartphone over the years and just upgrading the model every year, yet it manages to compete with Samsung's numerous handsets. But it is still good to note that both companies are still behind Nokia in terms of the actual units sold.

Apple will try to keep its post at the top of the charts as it launched on Nov. 17, 2011 the newest addition of the Nexus line, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus which is the newest flagship smartphone from Google and Samsung that runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It is the third generation successor to Google's previous flagship handsets, the Nexus One and the Nexus S.