There's a never-ending war raging before our very eyes. The battle for smartphone supremacy in the United States between Samsung and Apple never relents. The two companies always find themselves in the number one and two spots for the most popular smartphone maker in the country. However, which brand comes out ahead tends to shift.

Or it did. For a while, the two firms were back and forth. For the last three years, Apple has reigned supreme. That has changed today, as Samsung finally found itself as the number one smartphone brand in the US for the first time in three years.

Samsung Is Officially Number One

According to market researcher Strategy Analytics (h/t the Korea Herald), Samsung has slid its way into the number one spot for most smartphones sold in the US for the third quarter of 2020.

During the July-September period, Samsung accounted for 33.7 percent in the US smartphone market. That's an impressive 6.7 percent increase over the same period in 2019.

While Apple may not be number one anymore, the company still moved plenty of smartphones, accounting for 30.2 percent of the market.

LG (which recently launched the LG Wing in the US) came in third this quarter, making 14.7 percent of the market share. While not close to catching Apple, that's still a lot of smartphones sold within the US.

Unfortunately, the report didn't go into which phones were below LG, so it's not clear which companies are making the most significant moves.

The last time Samsung was number one in the US was the second quarter of 2017. While the Korean smartphone maker had some tremendous high-end devices come out in late 2020, the research team at Strategy Analytics says it was Samsung’s mid-tier and budget phones that pushed much of the growth.

Another reason could be the later release of the iPhone 12 series, which missed the third quarter this year. Instead, the company released them in early November.

Having only older models on the market for the entire quarter while consumers were aware that new and improved ones were on the way certainly didn't help Apple's cause. We'll know whether this theory is valid once the Q4 reports come out, as the iPhone 12 line of phones will be out.

Related: Apple Announces Affordable iPhone 12 Models

What About the Rest of the World?

While the US market is undoubtedly vital to companies like Samsung and Apple, there's an entire world of smartphone buyers out there. Fortunately for Samsung, the company is number one in the rest of the world, too.

Companies like Huawei and Xiaomi are nipping at its heels outside of the United States, but for now, no one moves as many smartphones as Samsung.