South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. regained its title as the top seller in the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, beating its archrival Apple Inc., data showed Wednesday.
  

Samsung sold 83.2 million smartphones worldwide in the January-March period, accounting for 24 percent of total global shipments, according to the data by industry tracker Strategy Analytics.
  

Apple posted 61.2 million units in global sales in the three-month period, or 18 percent of the world smartphone market.
  

In the fourth quarter of last year, Samsung and Apple tied with sales of 74.5 million units. It marked the first time that Samsung lost the top vendor spot to Apple since the third quarter of 2011.
  

Analysts said Samsung re-emerged as the top smartphone vendor in the first quarter on stable global sales, despite challenges in the Asian market amid the rise of Chinese firms.
  

Strategy Analytics said Lenovo-Motorola came in third with 18.8 million units, trailed by Huawei with 17.3 million units. (Yonhap)