Apple's stellar earnings report from Wednesday mostly revolved around one fascinating number: the 74.5 million iPhones sold in the December quarter.
It not only propelled Apple's profit to $18 billion -- the biggest quarterly profit posted by any company, ever -- but also may have dethroned Samsung as the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
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Samsung did not publicly disclose the number of smartphones sold in the quarter, so this statistic hasn't been confirmed. The South Korean company did say on Thursday, however, that it sold 95 million handsets in Q4, 70% of which of which were smartphones (that's 71 to 76 million).
An important distinction: When referring to unit sales, Samsung typically uses the term "shipped," which means the actual number of units sold might be lower. Apple used the term "sold" for its 74.5 million iPhones, but several analysts argued that the company is also referring to units shipped, not actually units sold to customers.
Regardless, the numbers cut it pretty close, and analysts mostly agree that Apple comes out ahead. According to a report from Strategy Analytics on Wednesday, the two companies sold exactly the same number of smartphones: 74.5 million.
On the other hand, Counterpoint Reacher's analysts say that Samsung sold 73.8 smartphones in the quarter; The Verge points to Creative Strategies' Ben Bajarin, who also sees Apple ahead of Samsung.
Trying to get closer to smartphone sell through for the quarter, this is how I think the landscape played out. pic.twitter.com/0faZxuRe12
— Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin) January 29, 2015
With 95 million handsets sold, Samsung still enjoys the title of the biggest phone manufacturer. But Apple is closing the gap quickly -- just a year ago, Samsung sold 86 million smartphones, compared to Apple's 51 million, per Strategy Analytics -- giving the former much cause for worry.