The world is now manufacturing just under 42 mobile phones a second thanks to an uptick in global production, IDC's presumably-very-tired handset-counters say.

The firm's latest quarterly phone count found shipped 327 million mobiles in the year's third quarter. Do the math: there's 7,862,400 seconds in 91 days. Divide 327m by that figure and you get an awesome demonstration of humanity's industrial might.

Samsung was top of the heap with 78.1 million shipments, or about 10 every second.

Only half as many iThings crawled into existence during every tick of the long red hand, dropping to about two a second each for Xiaomi, Lenovo and LG.

The remaining rabble birth a combined 20 phones a second, IDG found.

A current rates and according to wildly rounded back-of-envelope figures, one mobe will be summoned into existence for every man and dog in about six years, no accounting for a rise in human or canine populations.

The highlights of IDC's latest data included a steady decline in Samsung sales since the start of 2014 despite its domination of the phone production pump. Cheaper phones drove down its average selling price.

Cupertino splattered giant iPhones around the world chalking up its largest third-quarter volume ever thanks to 10 million iPhone 6 units selling during the launch weekend.

China's Xiaomi made the top five phone producers with its devices marking triple-digit year-over-year growth. The Mi4 smartmobe made much of its success at launch in August, leaving IDC analysts to muse over its ability to conquer the West.

Lenovo drew with LG thanks to a boost in non-China shipments to 20 percent up from nine percent of its total haul.

LG's cut-price strategy paid dividends as its volumes pushed past 15 million for the first time in the company's history. Analysts said its F-and L-series smart phones earned a warm reception in emerging and developed markets. It kept a foot in the door of Apple and Samsung with the G3 high-end phone. ®