Apple ^[1] will finally achieve some form of world dominance. By shipping 86.4 million iPhones this year, Apple will dethrone Nokia ^[2] as the globe’s leading smartphone shipper. Even more impressive: This is a 82-percent increase in iPhones from last year, when Apple shipped 47.5 million, according to a Digitimes report ^[3]. Now second place Nokia saw a 26-percent decrease in shipments. Smartphones are fast becoming what everyone carries in their pocket. 2011 global smartphone shipments will approach 462 million units, a 60-percent increase from 2010, when companies mailed out 288 million, according to the Digitimes report.

In some teeny, tiny way, Apple owes this success to fact that some companies will offer customers the chance to pre-order the iPhone 5 even though Apple has made no official announcement about a new model. German Deutsche Telekom ^[4], which owns T-Mobile ^[5], will let customers pre-order because it expects a crushing wave of demand upon official announcement.

Read more about the Digitimes report at The New York Times ^[6] and about Deutsche Telekom at Bloomberg ^[7].