Why Samsung is about to become the smartphone king

[Commentary] After leading the globe in smartphones sold for the last 15 years, Nokia is about to lose its crown as the smartphone king, but not to Apple. Samsung is poised to become the first company since 1996 to sell more smartphones than Nokia as early as this quarter, according to estimates from analysts at Nomura.

The leadership change shouldn't come as a surprise to those who have followed both Nokia’s fall from grace since the introduction of the original iPhone in 2007 and the strategic steps that Samsung has taken in recent years. Nokia, which accounted for 65.6 percent of all smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2007, only had a 24.3 percent share in the first quarter of this year, according to IDC figures. Meanwhile, Samsung embraced Android early, which has paid off, and made the following wise decisions to position itself as the new top dog in smartphones: 1) The design of the Galaxy S, 2) designing its own smartphone processors, 3) creating its own handset platform, 4) building its own media ecosystem, and 5) the Galaxy S 2.