Samsung has just released its latest Galaxy S III smartphone in Europe which is timed to carry out the maximum distruption to Apple's glorious plans. The S3 comes out before the summer London Olympics which will be used to further drive sales. It has said its mobile market share in China doubled after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and it will be only competing with the iPhone 4S which is looking somewhat smelly these days.

The S3 tracks the user's eye movements to keep the screen from dimming or turning off while in use, while Apple phones are famous switching off when you do something like stick them to your ear. The Galaxy S3 has a 4.8-inch screen, bigger than the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone 4S and the 4.7-inch screen on HTC's One X. Just like the iPhone customers began queuing outside an electronics retail store in Berlin on Monday night although some had just left their towels in the queue.

Vodafone, along with other carriers have been aggressively promoting the S3, fuelling speculation the smartphone could top the Galaxy S2's 20 million unit sales worldwide. Samsung introduced its first Galaxy in 2010, three years after the iPhone's debut. It sold 44.5 million smartphones in January-March giving it 30.6 percent market share. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, taking 24.1 percent market share. However the Galaxy S3 is a real challenger to the upcoming iPhone and will have months of the market to itself until the next iPhone is launched.

Apple plans to use a larger screen on the next iPhone, according to people familiar with the situation which will appear to many users as a response to Samsung rather than leading the way. The Galaxy S has voice recognition, S Voice, which does look similar to Apple's Siri, and image recognition software that can tag and share photographs. A model with 16 gigabytes of memory costs up to £189 pounds under a 12-month contract with Vodafone. A similar package for the iPhone 4s costs £159 pounds, but comes with a more expensive monthly data plan.