According to industry analysts, Samsung's handsets have been more in demand than Apple’s iPhones in the last three months. The South Korean mobile maker shipped nearly twice as many phones as Apple in the last quarter, and is now the world's top phone seller, ahead of the once-undisputed king Nokia.

In its last earnings report, Apple said it sold 26 million iPhones, about 10 million less than it sold in the previous quarter. The main reason for this slump in sales seem to be consumers holding out on buying an iPhone as they wait for the next-generation model sometime this fall.

Samsung, meanwhile, started shipping its Galaxy S3 flagship phone worldwide last quarter. Earlier this month, the company said it had already shipped 10 million units of the new smartphone. Moreover, Business Insider reports that several analyst groups estimate Samsung shipped roughly 50 million units in the last quarter.

One major contributing factor is that Samsung sells a wide variety of phones, not just the Galaxy S3, and those phones range across various price points. Apple, meanwhile, sticks to the high-end market for the most part, with the latest iPhone starting at around $199 with a two-year contract.

One the other hand, there is one notable thing to consider. The Samsung numbers reflect shipments, which show how many handsets the company sent to resellers. Apple's numbers, however, measure hard sales i.e. the actual number of handsets sold to consumers. Comparing shipments with sales is not exactly on the same line, not to mention that they're estimated figures. Nonetheless, the estimate figures do show there is a huge demand for Samsung's handsets.

According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung sold 93 million phones worldwide and saw its market share climb from 20.7 percent to 27.7 percent, while Nokia sold 83.7 million and saw a 5 percent drop. Meanwhile, Apple holds only 7.2 percent of the global market.

Again, Samsung offers a far wider range of phones at different prices, while Apple has just a few models of iPhone. Apple's highly-anticipated next-generation iPhone is expected sometime this fall, most likely around October, and many consumers are waiting for the new model rather than investing in an older iteration. Samsung's Galaxy S3 flagship phone launched in May after incredibly high anticipation, and is currently one of the hottest devices on the market.