Apple who? The Wall Street Journal has the scoop on a recent change in leadership as far as the smartphone segment is concerned. Apple is no longer on top, since Samsung managed to move around 20 million smartphones in Q3 2011.

In the same time frame, Apple sold 17.1 million iPhones, while Nokia moved around 16.8 million, not too shabby considering how poor Symbian can be considered in comparison with iOS for example. The performance of Samsung is all the more impressive if you take into account the fact that in Q2 2010 they sold a mere 3 million units, so the increase over the past quarter was no less than 500%.

I’m curios how many of the 20 million units were Android models, but I guess that the majority of them, with the rulers being the Galaxy S and S II models, that recently reached 30 million units sold combined. Now with Galaxy Nexus announced and Galaxy S III rumored for a March debut I can’t see anyone standing in Samsung’s path, aside from lawsuits and fees paid to Microsoft.