Next week will see the unveiling of the latest smartphone from Samsung and the Galaxy S3, and ahead of the devices release the company has reported record profits thanks to sales of its Galaxy range of devices that have also helped the company to outsell Apple.

Samsung has just reported record profits for the first quarter of 2012 that have been boosted by a strong rise in sales of the Galaxy range of smartphones, and according to The Telegraph Samsung has overtaken Apple in sales and become the world’s top mobile phone manufacturer.

Net profit almost doubled to 5.05 trillion won or £2.76 billion for the three months to the end of March, and over seventy percent of the company’s profits came from its mobile arm of the business. Samsung also passed Nokia during the quarter as the world’s top handset maker, which ended Nokia’s fourteen year reign.

During the period Samsung sold a massive 93.5 million handsets achieving 25.4 percent or 1 in 4 of the worldwide phone market. The company just beat Apple last year with smartphones sales, but during the first quarter this became a larger margin with Samsung shifting 44.5 million smartphones compared to Apple’s 35.1 million.

While Apple’s iPhone and iPad business has the bigger profits at £7.17 billion during the same quarter, which is more than twice as much as Samsung, even though its revenue is around ten percent less. The news saw Samsung Electronics share price climbing by 2.54 percent after an operating profit of 5.85 trillion won was reported, another record.

The company has seen strong consumer demand for its smartphones that includes the likes of the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Note, but sales of these devices helped to paper over lower profits from its memory chips and other parts of its business.

With the launch of the Galaxy S3 to come next week it will bring even more sales to the company along with demand for its personal computers. The company was once not held in high esteem in the smartphone market, but that has rapidly changed in recent times and has come largely at the expense of Nokia.

According to reports Nokia sold around ten million fewer devices than Samsung during the same quarter, and during 2011 Samsung shifted 330 million handsets, which included 97 million smartphones.

While the bitter patent dispute between Apple and Samsung rumbles on, Apple helped Samsung as it’s a big customer for its semiconductor and display screen businesses that helped the division return to profit. The company is also the world biggest supplier of memory chips, and reported a profit of 760 billion won for the quarter, which is under half of what was reported a year ago.

Will you be getting a Samsung smartphone this year?