Apple has clearly been upping its game when it comes to making the iPhone the most popular device on the market, but RIM is still making noise saying how good it is. I decided find out who was selling the most smartphones.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]I looked at the last four fiscal quarters for Apple and RIM and get a feeling for which company was on the way up, or down, and who really did have the bragging rights.

Of course, fiscal quarters do not run like calendar quarters, so they are a bit off based on dates, but they are still pretty close. This isn’t meant to be scientific, but rather a look at four quarters to see how smartphone sales are trending.

There is one thing that should be pointed out. RIM’s numbers say shipped, while Apple’s are devices sold. RIM’s numbers could actually be the number of devices shipped to the channel, which means the actual number sold could be less.

RIM: Q1 2010 period ending May 29, 2010

Shipped 11.2 million devices

Apple: Q3 2010 period ending June 26, 2010

Sold 8.4 million iPhones

RIM: Q2 2010 period ending August 28, 2010

Shipped 12.1 million devices

Apple: Q4 2010 period ending September 25, 2010

Sold 14.1 million iPhones

RIM: Q3 2010 period ending November 27, 2010

Shipped 14.2 million devices

Apple: Q1 2010 period ending December 25, 2010

Sold 16.24 million iPhones

RIM: Q4 2010 period ending February 26, 2011

Shipped 14.9 million devices

Apple: Q2 2010 period ending March 26, 2011

Sold 18.65 million iPhones

RIM did have the advantage for the first fiscal quarter we looked at, but everything after that was clearly in favor of Apple.

For the year, RIM shipped 52.4 million devices. Apple topped them by shipping 57.39 iPhones. That’s about 5 million more iPhones sold than RIM shipped BlackBerrys.