Samsung and Apple are responsible for almost a 60% worldwide market share of smartphone shipments, according to recently released figures.

A study, published by research firm IDC, shows that in the first quarter of 2012 Samsung shipped over 42 million smartphones, giving the Korean manufacturer a 29.1% global market share. Apple trail just behind with 35 million iPhones shipped in the same period, securing 24.2% of market share in the process.

The results show huge year-on-year growth for both brands, with increases of 267% and 88.7% for Samsung and Apple respectively. While the continued success of the iPhone 4S is clearly responsible for the Cupertino company’s positive figures, the strong numbers for Samsung are in large part due to the phenomenal demand for both the Galaxy S II handset and the Galaxy Note smartphone-tablet hybrid.

div style=”position:relative”link type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://accounts.icharts.net/widget/assets/ichartwidget.css”/link iframe src=”http://accounts.icharts.net/icharts/embed/M3vSzS5H” height=”474″ width=”480″ frameborder=”0″/iframediv id=”chartdetails110642″spanChart:          Top Five WW Smartphone Vendors, 1Q 2012,           Five Quarter Market Share Changes (Units)/spanspanDescription: Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, May 1, 2012Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors.IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker provides smart phone and  feature phone market data in 54 countries by vendor, device type, air interface, operating systems and platforms, and generation.  Over 20 additional technical segmentations are provided.  The data is provided four times a year and includes historical and forecast trend analysis. For more information, or to subscribe to the research, please contact Kathy Nagamine at 1-650-350-6423 or knagamine@idc.com. For more information about this tracker go to:   http://www.idc.com/tracker/showproductinfo.jsp?prod_id=37/spanspanTags: IDC, Tracker, Mobile Phone, Mobile Phones, Mobile Phone Tracker, 1Q201 …/spanspanAuthor: a href=”http://www.idc.com”IDC/a/spanspana href=”http://www.icharts.net”charts powered by iCharts/a/span/div/div

Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst with IDC, said in a statement: “The race between Apple and Samsung remained tight during the quarter, even as both companies posted growth in key areas.

“Apple launched its popular iPhone 4S in additional key markets, most notably in China, and Samsung experienced continued success from its Galaxy Note smartphone/tablet and other Galaxy smartphones.”

Alongside the battle for market share, the continued legal wrangling between Apple and Samsung has become something of a running joke within the technology world, reaching the point where the two companies are to be literally forced, by a courtroom judge into a room together to sort out their differences.  However, it is not too difficult to surmise that the IDC research results will only push the brands into an even more intense dogfight as the battle for revenue joins the numerous patent arguments currently being dragged through European and US courtrooms.

Other manufacturers did not fare so well in the study, with Nokia in particular showing a 50% fall in year-on-year shipments. Similarly, RIM appears to be in an unenviable position with a decline of almost 30% and HTC saw a fall of 23.3%.

However, a recent study from Juniper Research suggested that there is still huge growth to come in the smartphone sector, with total shipments in 2017 predicted to hit an astounding 1.1 billion devices. Therefore it is feasible to suggest that Nokia and RIM could potentially see an increase in market share in the coming years if they are able to innovate and bring exciting products to market. Indeed, the recent BB 10 OS showcases at this year’s BlackBerry World conference point towards an intriguing future for the Canadian manufacturer.

Relative newcomers such as Huawei, ZTE and LG also look set to become big hitters in the smartphone arena. Huawei impressed at this year’s CES, unveiling the world’s slimmest smartphone in the Ascend P1 S and also the extremely well-specced Ascend D1 Q made an appearance at MWC. LG similarly looks to be taking aim at the top-end of the market with both the Optimus 4X HD and Optimus L7 handsets.

With a rapidly growing market and incredibly fast-paced innovation across the board, it looks set to be a very interesting few years in the world of smartphones.

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The ability to search for Android apps in online app-search engine Chomp has been removed following its purchase by Apple.

Chomp allows users to conduct detailed searches of available apps and separate results into a variety of categories.

Apple bought the search engine in February for an undisclosed sum. Apple’s iTunes App Store has been criticised in the past for being difficult to navigate. Some developers have said that it is too difficult to find apps beyond those that are featured in certain elements of the service.

In the past there are examples of Apple buying up small companies and shutting them down after integrating the technology into its own products. Music-streaming service LaLa was purchased by tech giant at the end of 2009 and closed down shortly afterwards.

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Rumours about the Galaxy S III continue to emerge ahead of Samsung’s Unpacked event this evening.

A screenshot taken from a listing in the inventory system of mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse has been sent to mobile news site GSMArena. The image indicates that the Korean firm will be making the new device available in two colours, blue and white.

Samsung fans concerned that the S III might not be available in the traditional black need not worry though. Speculation prompted by the leak suggests that the colour could be similar to one option in the Galaxy Note range in which the blue casing is so dark that it is effectively black and the coloured hue can only be seen under direct light.

The choice of colours is interesting since Samsung didn’t release a white version of the S II until several months after the device was launched.

Dialaphone will be at the Samsung Unpacked event this evening to give you details as they happen. We’ll be tweeting and live-blogging from Earl’s Court with all the information about the new Samsung device.

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The second day of RIM’s showcase event was a calmer affair than the first lacking anything to match the dazzling display of the new BlackBerry operating system. However, the Canadian company has laid out more of its future plans since we last updated you.

The biggest announcement, one that will ease any worries of dedicated BlackBerry fans, is that RIM will continue to make devices with physical keypads. US-based mobile site Phone Scoop report that RIM confirmed the strategy at BlackBerry World, but was informed that the first BB10 devices may be touchscreen-only. Physical keypads are said to be something that will be reintroduced into the BlackBerry range at a later stage.

Whilst on the subject of hardware, another announcement from RIM states that it is planning on releasing another developer-only device before the end of the year. The Dev Alpha, which has been given out at the event, does not run BB10 and RIM has stated that it has no plans for an upgrade. Any new device will only be available to developers who have made an app compatible with the new OS and had it approved.

The other news for developers of BlackBerry apps is that RIM is now offering a cash incentive to create for the upcoming OS. BB10 is said to be mostly incompatible with previous iterations of RIM’s proprietary platform and the company is eager to have a good stock of apps available upon launch. Developers are being offered $10,000 (£6,200) as a reward, although it is specified that the app must have made at least $1000 dollars worth of sales and have passed BlackBerry’s quality tests.

Elsewhere, RIM made a triumphant claim regarding its app sales. During 2011 the number of developers working within the BlackBerry App Store grew by 254%, making it the fastest growing app-development community in the mobile world. The number of apps available has now reached 99,500, which RIM claim dispels rumours that developers were leaving the platform. However, the figure is still a long way off the numbers that can be boasted by Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play.

In amongst all the talk about BB10, the PlayBook hasn’t been forgotten as RIM announced an upgrade to the tablet’s software, PlayBook OS 2.1, will be available to developers at the end of this month. A full version will be released in the summer and will include new features such as in-app payments and over-the-air activation. It was also revealed that that the existing PlayBook device will be upgradeable to BB10 when it launches.

Lastly, there is some bad news for RIM itself. Despite yesterday’s opening of BlackBerry World 2012 and CEO Thorsten Heins’ impressive display of the manufacturer’s new software, the company’s share value fell by 6%. We’ll have a round-up of news from the third and final day of BlackBerry World 2012 tomorrow.

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Google has filed several patents that suggest a future Nexus device could have a sliding physical keypad.

Three patents were submitted in January which named Android’s Andy Rubin as the creator. Rubin was part of the Danger Inc. team who designed the T-Mobile Sidekick series of sliding QWERTY-keypad devices back in 2002.

The designs detail a number of innovations which could allow even the slimmest phones to be fitted with a retractable keypad, avoiding the chunky and cumbersome handsets of the past.

Along with the space-saving innovations, the patents show other features which could be included on a sliding panel including notification LEDs, a trackpad or possibly another touchscreen.

With HTC recently claiming that consumers will choose a slim device even at the expense of other features such as extended battery life, the thickness of any upcoming devices will be an important consideration for manufacturers.

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