Early on Wednesday morning, Strategy Analytics posted their newest numbers on the world’s smartphone market. Coming out on top, Apple’s iPhone 5 was sold an estimated 27.4 million times worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2012. Out of the 217 million smartphones sold during this period, the iPhone 5 accounted for 13%.

In addition, the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S put together accounted for 1 in every 5 smartphones shipped in Q4 of 2012. These numbers show that Apple still has a pretty good grip on the worldwide smartphone market despite losing overall market share to Android in the past years. With the Galaxy S4 on the way, one can only wonder what these stats will look like come mid-2013.

The iPhone 5 destroyed the Samsung Galaxy S3 in this time frame, which shipped out only 15.4 S3 units during Q4 of 2012. Furthermore, the Galaxy S3 could not even touch the 17.4 million iPhone 4S units sold during Q4. It is crazy to think that the iPhone 4S sold more units in Q4 than it did in Q3, even with the introduction of the iPhone 5.

Despite the incredible number of iPhone 5 sales, Apple stock plummeted from close to 700 points all the way down to below 450 during Q4 of 2012. At the end of Q4 when Apple posted earnings, they were met yet again by disappointment because they did not post “great” earnings.

Are you one of the 27.4 million new iPhone 5 owners? How long do you think that Apple will hold the number 1 spot? Let us know in the comments below.

It’s nice to read about top-of-the-range flagship smartphones with quad-core this and ultra-pixel that, unfortunately we can’t all afford those super phones and some of us need a budget smartphone phone as our daily runner.

Acer knows this to and has unveiled the 3.5-inch Acer Liquid Z2. Specifications are on the basic side with a small HVGA display, just 512mb RAM and a 5 mega-pixel rear camera, but you do get Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and it will only cost between 100 and 130 Euros.

What do you think, a decent enough budget phone or just to weak for a phone at this point?

Research in Motion has wiped the slate clean, so to speak, with its launch of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the brand new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. We’ve gotten our hands on a review unit courtesy of Telus and I’ve put together a quick overview and unboxing video for you to enjoy.

As a quick refresher, the BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2-inch 768 x 1280 pixel display, a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon Krait 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a microSD slot for additional storage. There’s an 8MP camera on the back with LED flash and a 2MP camera on the front for video calls. Naturally, it comes with the usual assortment of LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC radios in tow.

As far as the contents of the box, there aren’t too many surprises. Aside from the phone itself, you get a stereo headset, USB cable, wall adapter, and documentation. The elongated battery looks a little different than most and boasts a capacity of 1800mAh. The rubbery textured back is similar to what we’ve seen in previous Berries, but it does feel a little extra rubbery this time around. The phone did feel lighter than expected, even after I put the battery in, but it still felt quite solid in the hands.

My initial impressions are mostly positive, but the 4.2-inch display feels comparatively small in a market flooded with 4.7+ inch Android devices. There’s also a definite bezel around the display, since BlackBerry 10 requires those gestures to originate from beyond the screen. I’ll be putting the Z10 though its paces for the next while and the full review will follow shortly thereafter.