Worldwide sales of the controversial phone have now exceeded 5 million, proving naysayers well and truly wrong, who said the original phone was too big and without a targeted purpose.

The latest iteration of the Note features a screen measuring 141 millimetres diagonally and a digital pen for note-taking, with Aussie telcos currently taking preorders for a December release of the 4G iteration.

The Note II was released first in South Korea in September and in the US and other countries in the following month, with the broader trend of phone designs pushing towards bigger, rather than smaller, displays.

Samsung's Note series is one of the company's two mobile devices at the high-end smartphone segment, along with the Galaxy S III, helping Samsung maintain its current lead over Apple in the smartphone market, depending on which sales statistics you look at.

US research firm IDC said Samsung topped the global smartphone market in the July-September third quarter with 56.3 million sales, more than double Apple's 26.9 million iPhone sales.

The two companies controlled combined 46 per ecent of the global smartphone market, IDC said.

The latest stastistics will all but guarantee a Galaxy Note III device, which would assumedly be launched sometime next year.