More than 30 million hands are fiddling with the Samsung Galaxy S3 at the moment, the South Korean tech giant reported over the weekend, supporting latest data from research firm IDC that showed Samsung once again reigns supreme in the global smartphone arena.

The prestigious role has been with Samsung for three straight quarters and it is likely that 2012 will end with the company comfortably sitting on top of the lucrative field, relishing the fruits of its bruising battles with another giant, Apple.

Apple is widely-regarded as the pacesetter and innovator while critics labelled Samsung as a copycat but a first-class one at that and the latter doesn't seem to mind.

It could be that Samsung merely follows on the lead of Apple and any other firms, with a U.S. jury affirming that notion earlier this year, but the Korean tech giant appears far distraught by the suggestions, IDC research analyst Kevin Restivo told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday.

Records showed that Samsung first made its mark in consumer electronic products that in the previous decades were known as the turf of Japanese brands like Sony, Panasonic and Sharp.

But slowly and surely, the South Korean company gained headway and soon enough improved on its in-house technology and thereby bolstering its reputation. Then it trained its eyes on other tech segments and saw opportunities in the rising smartphone industry.

By 2007, Apple had introduced the first iPhone that renewed the withering excitement of global consumers who had grown tired of the boring bricks then churned out by perennial leaders Nokia and Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry.

As the iPhone and its subsequent editions zoomed to the top, in the process waylaying virtually all competition, Samsung correctly predicted that the altered course of the global mobile phone industry will require two key players.

It aimed to capture one of the slots, with Apple nestled securely on the top though not for long, and it relied on the system readily provided by Google, Android, which can power both mobile phones and tablet computers - two products that made Apple the most valuable company in the world.

The gambit paid off and IDC said Android is now an ecosystem that caters to 136 million smartphones shipped out as of September 2012. The telecom market analyst also said on its new report that for every four smartphones in active circulation, three were powered by the Google mobile platform, increasing its global share to around 75 per cent from last year's 57.5 per cent.

And the good news for Samsung, 20 per cent of all smartphones sales in Q3 2012 were made by the company, effectively eclipsing the Apple's market pie of 14.5 per cent, also in the same period. The last time Apple was ahead was in December 2011 or about two months after the release of the iPhone 4S.

Analysts doubt if the iPhone 5 will propel Apple anew to the top by the end the current year as the S3 continues to attract millions of buys, a pace that the handset is expected to sustain through December this year, to taper off only by Q2 2013 as its replacement, the Galaxy S4, is expected to be pushed out by Samsung.

"Being a fast follower can be a path to number one, and Samsung is a case study for that," Mr Restivo said as he tries to make sense of the Asian firm's success formula.

He lauded too Samsung's move of betting big time on Android, which allowed it to develop handsets that gradually gobbled market shares not only from Apple but also from erstwhile leaders Nokia and RIM.

"Once it commandeered the Android battleship and got it pointed in the right direction, it made real dents in the opposition," the IDC analyst added.

In fact, Samsung's success is so compelling that Apple will likely expand on the iPad Mini mould - also producing affordable mobile phones that comprise the bulk of the 56.3 million handsets that former had pushed out from July through September this year, HMC Investment Security analyst Greg Roh told AFP.

In order to reverse the trend, in which Samsung enjoys the bigger market share and a steady profit margin, Apple will need to rethink its road map, Daewoo Securities analyst James Song said.

"I think Apple will soon be forced to roll out mid- or low-priced gadgets in order to survive," Mr Song was reported by AFP as saying.