If you thought Apple's 26 million iPhone shipments during the second quarter of 2012 was impressive, just wait until you hear how many Samsung shipped. Juniper Research says that Samsung managed to double that number to 52.1 million smartphones shipped in the second quarter of 2012, quite the impressive number.

Total shipments of smartphones during the same period totaled 132.9 million, according to estimates. This means that with Samsung and Apple's shipments combined, they make up more than half of the total smartphone shipments. Samsung's sales numbers were likely boosted significantly by the Galaxy S III which sold 10 million units in just 2 months.

To get a feeling for just how well the top two manufacturers are doing, Nokia shipped just 10.2 million in the second quarter. RIM managed only 7.4 million shipments. It's likely Apple will gain some ground on Samsung with the release of the iPhone 5, but at the same time it is unlikely that Samsung will sit idly by.