New York, Jun 15 (IANS): South Korean smartphone giant Samsung sold the most number of smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of the year and is expected to sell 320 million smartphones by the end of the year, a new report said on Wednesday.

According to US-based market research company IC Insights, buoyed by the strong sales growth of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Samsung sold 81.5 million smartphones, followed by Apple with 51.6 million smartphones -- in the first quarter.

Although the list of top 12 smartphone makers is dominated by China-based smartphone suppliers -- taking eight spots in the list -- Indian smartphone supplier Micromax broke into the list for the first time.

It sold five million devices in the first quarter of the year and is projected to sell 25 million smartphones by the end of the year -- 74 per cent increase from last year.

“Among the Chinese players, Huawei is at number three, OPPO at number four, Xiaomi at number five, Vivo at number six, ZTE at number eight, Lenovo at number nine and TCL and Meizu are at spots 10 and 11, respectively,” androidheadlines.com said, quoting the report.

Sony, Microsoft and Coolpad who were in the top 12 list dropped out this year.

Lenovo, which was at fourth spot last year, dropped to ninth place this year - selling only 10.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2016. Their sales for the year are expected to drop 26 per cent from 2015.

According to IC Insights, total global smartphone sales will increase by 5 percent from 1.43 billions units in 2015 to 1.5 billion in 2016.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 device has also topped the 2016 American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) poll.

According to the annual poll comprising 12,710 people, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 phablet has a rating of 86 out of 100, 9to5mac.com reported recently.

iPhone 6 Plus is one notch behind at 85. In last year's satisfaction index, Apple and Samsung were neck-to-neck at 80.