Mobile phone sales could have a reached a saturation point, according to analysts, with the industry seeing its slowest growth rate since 2009. But that hasn't stopped Samsung from selling more than 566,000 a day over the past 90 days.

"A volatile global economy, maturing penetration of smartphones among contract mobile subscribers, and some Apple fans holding off purchases in anticipation of a new iPhone 5 model later this year were among the main causes of the slowdown," believes Alex Spektor, associate director at Strategy Analytics.

According to the latest research from the company, global smartphone shipments grew 32 per cent annually to reach 146 million units in the second quarter of 2012 with Samsung and Apple together capturing over half the global market.

“Samsung shipped 50.5 million smartphones worldwide and captured a record 35 per cent market share in the second quarter of 2012. This was the largest number of units ever shipped by a smartphone vendor in a single quarter," adds Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. 

Apple too shipped over 26 million smartphones in the same time, meaning the two companies dominated sales in the last 90 days as company's such as HTC, LG, and Nokia failed to deliver handsets people bought in the same droves they did the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S III.

"Volumes have polarised around those two brands. The growth of Samsung and Apple has come partly at the expense of Nokia, whose global smartphone market share has halved from 15 per cent to 7 per cent over the past year," says Neil Shah, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

"This is Nokia’s lowest market share level in the smartphone category for a decade. Nokia is seeing reasonable growth in its new Microsoft Lumia portfolio, but it is not yet offsetting the sharp decline in its aging Symbian platform.”