Samsung struggles to knock Apple off its perch.

Apple’s iPhone 5 remains the most popular smartphone in the UK in May, despite heavy competition from rival Samsung’s Galaxy S4.

Apple’s iPhone 5 has shown that it is still the UK’s most popular smartphone after uSwitch’s monthly tracker found that Apple came out top in terms of live searches, pre-orders and sales. Samsung’s Galaxy S4, which went on sale in the UK in March, has failed to encapsulate the UK and allowed the iPhone to dominate the charts for the third month in a row.

The biggest concern for the Korean based gadget maker is that, it is continually trailing Apple’s previous model iPhone 4S, pushing them into third place. Apple’s iPhone 4 is close behind in fourth. This is despite Samsung having more devices in the top ten, (five compared to Apple’s three).

However, Samsung remains the most popular smartphone provider worldwide with around 29% of the global market compared to Apple’s 21%.

Samsung is set to unveil its latest phone in the Galaxy series, the ‘Mini’ in June. This new entry into the increasingly crowded market will heighten the battle for the smartphone dominance between Apple and Samsung.

The two giants of the mobile world are set to have another battle on their hands in the coming months with the launch of Nokia’s Lumia EOS and its first mobile tablet in July. With the former telecoms giant catching up, the focus will now be on them to see if they can truly bring a challenge to Apple and Samsung.

The smartphone market is starting to hot up and the competition between each of the manufacturers is only set to become more fierce as smartphone penetration continues globally.