Data surfacing from a report from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows that increasing demand for Apple's newest handset, the iPhone 4S, led to it dominating market share in Q4 2011 ahead of Android phones.

In the October to December period Apple's share doubled from the year before, reaching 44.9 percent, beating out Android which had fallen down to 44.8 percent from its previous 50 percent.

Record-breaker

"Apple has continued its strong sales run in the US, UK and Australia over the Christmas period," Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at the research firm said.

"Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover."

This research comes after a record-breaking financial report from Apple, in which it revealed revenues of $46.33 billion, up 73 percent year-on-year. Reuters reports that shares in the Cupertino firm rose by 8 percent.

Planting seeds

Meanwhile, despite the high-profile launch of the Nokia Lumia series of phones, and perhaps because the Lumia 800 is yet to launch in the US, Microsoft's Window Phone share maintained a 2 percent hold.

In the UK Nokia's Lumia 800 failed to break into the top ten phones sold.

"The Nokia Lumia 800 still needs to be joined by a number of other competitive Windows Phone handsets before we are likely to see the OS providing any real challenge to the likes of Apple, Android and BlackBerry," Sunnebo said.

Sunnebo went on to predict that Windows Phone would gain a 10 percent share of the market in the second half of 2012.

[source: Reuters]