In this game of thrones, it is as much about Apple winning as it is Nokia losing. Earlier today, just two days after Apple released their staggering sales and revenue numbers over the last three months, Nokia announced massive losses for the same time period.

This shifting of fortunes for both companies has dethroned Nokia as the leading cell phone manufacturer, and crowned Apple as high king. For now.

Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop determined the situation was "clearly dissapointing" and that there were "greater than expected" issues when Nokia moved from the Symbian operating system to Microsoft's Windows Phone.

Comparitively, it might not have been possible for Apple's Tim Cook to be more optimistic and excited about the success and futue of Apple during a conference call earlier this week.

While Apple's iOS trails Google's Android operating system in number of worldwide users, this is largely based on the wide number of smartphone manufacturers who create devices running Android. Samsung and HTC, particularly, have become major players in the market by making Android smartphones. Apple, however, is the only manufacturer of the iPhone, which is the only smartphone running iOS. So when you compare the companies -- ahem -- apples to apples, as smartphone manufacturers, Cupertino's 20 million smartphones shipped in the last three months is the truly remarkable number that puts Apple at the head of the class; Nokia's 16.7 million smartphones shipped during that same period will drop the deposed Finnish king to third place, and Samsung will most likely grab second place with 19.5 million smartphones shipped in the last three months when they release their numbers next week.

With a new iPhone on the horizon, and a possible prepaid iPhone, as well as the much-heralded iOS 5 update slotted for this fall, it does not appear Apple is planning to lose the throne in the smartphone kingdom anytime soon.

Via TNW