Deck the halls, break out the traditional holiday doughnuts and throw another TPS report on the fire, it’s quarterly earnings call season. Samsung certainly has reason to celebrate: in the last three months they’ve shipped 28 million smartphones worldwide, taking the #1 spot away from Apple. Samsung doesn’t use Android exclusively for their smartphone hardware, but needless to say, it plays a big part in their worldwide strategy.

Samsung’s sales in the mobile department, including all smartphones and feature phones, rose by almost 40% to 13.05 billion dollars. It’s not all good news: the company’s gross profit was down 13% year over year. Total income, including all of Samsung’s various consumer electronics, semiconductor and business-to-business sales rose by 3% to $37.5 billion, with the mobile division driving the company and posting the only gains.

Samsung’s got a busy quarter ahead of them in the mobile space, with both the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Note coming to various markets within the next month. The Galaxy S line of smartphones, which has sold over 30 million devices across the original and Galaxy S II models, will see high-definition and LTE updates soon as well. The Galaxy S III is expected sometime next year. Samsung’s bottom line might be affected by Apple’s lawsuits worldwide, which have already resulted in sales bans on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany and Australia.