Apple became the world's largest mobile phone vendor by revenue

After Apple has unveiled its financial results for the first quarter of 2011 it became obvious that in terms of revenue the company replaced Nokia and became the largest mobile phone maker in the world.

Recently Nokia reported that its Devices & Services division earned $9.7 billion, but that includes global sales of all the company's handheld mobile computers, including smartphones, tablets and non-smart feature phones, and also a broad range of Ovi-branded services that include email, music and app store.

In turn, in the first quarter of 2011 Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones and only that brought $10.5 billion of revenue, and we don't take into account iTunes Store revenue to make it more comparable with the revenue of Nokia's above-mentioned division.

It is interesting that Steve Jobs had already claimed that Apple became the "largest mobile device company" in the world a year ago, but then Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo insisted that it is proper to use a "generally accepted and stable definition of mobile devices" and thus not to take into account notebook computers, which made it the top world manufacturer again.

Now Apple doesn't even have to include revenue from selling such mobile devices as iPads and MacBook Airs to prove that it's the largest mobile phone maker in the world. And the scariest thing for Nokia - Apple is just getting started to expand its share on the global market, according to Tim Cook.

"We have a relatively low share in the handset market. The handset market is well over 1 billion units a year, and the smartphone market is growing faster than a weed. And so there's enormous opportunity here, and we have incredible momentum in that space."