iPhone-maker Apple finally overtook Finnish mobile device manufacturer Nokia to become the global market share leader in smartphones during second quarter of this year, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics.

The firm found that Nokia’s market share, as measured by device shipments, fell precipitously from 38.1% in the second quarter of 2010 to 15.2% in the same period of this year, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Apple’s market share grew from 13.5% to 18.5%.

Nokia still holds the largest share of the overall mobile handset market, but even that dropped from 34.7% last year to 24.5% this year – its lowest share in 12 years.

Last month, the Finnish company demonstrated the first of its phones based on Microsoft’s Window Phone 7 operating system – the result of a strategic partnership with the software giant that it hopes will reverse its plummeting market share.

Codenamed Sea Ray, the phone is primarily a consumer-focussed device with functionality including facial recognition for photographs and XBox games, but Nokia also demonstrated how productivity suite Microsoft Office would work on the handset.

In other Apple news, it has emerged that the company’s $76 billion cash reserves outweigh the US government’s $73 billion operating balance, the amount of money it could spend before hitting the ‘debt ceiling’ currently being debated in the House of Representatives.  

Last week, software engineer and influential blogger Dave Winer speculated that Apple, as well as Google and Amazon, may be stockpiling cash in order to offer banking services, or something like them. "The big deal is who can make the money flow through their networks," he wrote. "And when it’s all finished, what that looks like is closest to what we think of as a bank today."