Motorola used to be the largest mobile phone maker in America, I say used to be because according to an article over on electronista, Motorola has now lost that title to none other than the producer of the iconic iPhone, Apple.

This winter saw a drop to 8.5 million phone shipments by Motorola and as Apple shipped 8.75 million of their iPhone handsets, they have now claimed the title pushing Motorola into second place.

Surprisingly Palm, who is being acquired by HP, took third place with 408,000 webOS smartphones being shipped in the quarter. As for Research In Motion, although they quite often ship more BlackBerry smartphones in the States than Apple ships iPhones, its base is in Canada and thus classified as a foreign maker.

Apparently, the drop in Motorola shipments was in part voluntary due to Motorola shedding their regular mobile phones in favour of producing smartphones.