Even if you are not a part of i-crowd, you have to concede that no other smartphone has the magic allure of iPhone.

Still, there are other handsets with mass appeal, most notably the Samsung Galaxy family.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) figures released beginning September 2012, Samsung is the leader in the smartphone market. As much as 32.6% of all smartphones (about 50.2 million units) in the world are of the Samsung family. This is a sharp increase in comparison with previous year, when Samsung’s share stood at 17%.

(As an aside, the IDC figures put Apple iPhone at the second place with 26 million units and 16.9% of the international smartphone market share, down from 18.8% a year earlier. Nokia is at the third place, with 10.2 million units and 6.6% share, down from 15.4% a year earlier.)

A good part of the rise and rise of Samsungs is due to the success of Samsung Galaxy S lll. Launched in May 2012 and powered by Google’s Android operating system, the S lll has managed to deserve several times over the appellation of Korean manufacture’s flagship product.

Beginning September, Samsung announced that global sales of Galaxy S III have surpassed 20 million. The sales are still strong all over the world, including the USA, even though Samsung lost to Apple the round one of the Californian court case involving patent and intellectual property infringements, and despite the launch of iPhone 5. Localytics, an app analytics company, estimates that the sales of Samsung’s flagship phone were at their highest when rival Apple was grabbing the headlines.

It’s not for nothing that as soon as you say “iPhone”, the non-i-crowd answers with: S llliii!