Samsung and Apple are solidifying their positions as the number one and two smartphone vendors on the planet, according to a report from ABI Research. The two companies shipped 78 million handsets in the first quarter of the year, or 55 percent of the total, as big names like HTC, Motorola, Nokia, and RIM continue to backslide.

Apple shipped 35 million handsets in Q1 while Samsung shipped 43 million, powered by popular models like the Galaxy S II. The two companies also captured 90 percent of the market's global profits, according to ABI, and Samsung alone captured 29.7 percent of the total shipments.

Surprisingly, some of their gains come at the expense of two other big names: HTC and Motorola. Motorola slipped only a bit, from 5.4 million handsets in Q4 2011 to 5.1 million in Q1 2012. Michael Morgan, ABI's senior analyst for mobile devices, told Ars that the drop was "likely due to seasonality." Motorola had a handful of handset launches spanning last fall, including the Droid Razr (which was launched globally as the Motorola Razr), Photon 4G, and the Droid Bionic.

HTC's global decline was much bigger. The company was down to 6.9 million shipments in Q1 2012 from 10.1 million in Q4 2011. Morgan says the big drop is "due to lack of demand for their LTE handsets compared to the iPhone and Samsung devices." HTC seemed largely focused on Windows Phones last fall, which may not have made a big splash; the company's high-profile trio of One phones running Android have only just arrived on the market. HTC CEO Peter Chou said that the company released too many phone models last year. "We tried to do too much," Chou said.

In fact, HTC was beaten handily even by RIM last quarter. RIM saw a 20 percent decline between the two quarters measured, but is still hanging on at 11.1 million phones shipped in Q1. Nokia, which largely gave up on its feature phone business and Symbian handsets to focus on smartphones and the Windows Phone platform with handsets like the Lumia 900, saw a 40 percent decline, with 11.9 million smartphones shipped in Q1.