Apple is taking 104% of the profits in the entire smartphone industry

Apple is now taking a massive 104% of all profits in the smartphone industry.

According to a new estimate from BMO Capital Markets, as reported by Investor's Business Daily, the Californian technology giant managed the seemingly impossible feat of generating more than 100% of the industry's profits in the third quarter of 2016 - 103.6%, to be precise.

How is that even possible? It's because other companies either failed to make a profit or actually lost money - among them, HTC and LG.

In a very distant second-place is Samsung, with just 0.9% of industry profits in Q3 2016. This is after its flagship Note 7 smartphone started exploding, sparking a global recall of millions of devices that cost the South Korean company billions, wiping out its mobile profits.

Apple's achievement is all the more impressive when you remember what a tiny segment of the smartphone industry it claims in terms of shipments. BMO estimates that Apple was responsible for just 13.2% of smartphone sales in Q3. (Samsung was number one, with 21.7%.)

This time last year, BMO estimated that Apple was taking a still-impressive 94% of industry profits. And in 2014, it was 85%.

If Samsung recovers well from its exploding smartphone fiasco in 2017, it seems unlikely that Apple will manage to keep its 100%-plus share of industry profits.

But it's a striking reminder of just how insanely profitable Apple's smartphone business is compared to absolutely everyone else in the game.