It’s finally happened – Apple is now the number one smartphone vendor in the United States. After a four year struggle, Nokia has been dethroned as king of the cell phone industry. Apple has been contending for the top spot over the last couple months – it passed RIM for second in the third quarter of last year and now has passed Nokia, the longtime industry leader for first. By 3.6 million units, I might add.

This does not, however, mean that iOS is the top operating system – Android still holds that title. However, since Android phones are manufactured by many companies, no one of them sells anywhere near as much volume as Apple – although Samsung and HTC are the closest, selling about half as many units as Apple.

We’ve known for a long time that Nokia is on it’s way down – they haven’t had a popular smartphone yet. However, they recently announced a partnership with Microsoft to ship Windows Phone 7 devices – so Apple may still have some competition. But with the release of the iPhone 5 coming up soon, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.