Just ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings call today, Gartner, a researching firm, has come out with a new report today that suggests that the company is the world’s largest buyer of semiconductors in the world. Apple spent around $17 billion on semiconductors in 2011, making it the largest chip customer in the world. Shouldn’t it be a company that manufactures Android phones (the OS that’s “winning)!? You know, like Samsung!

Apple claimed the top position with a 34.6 percent growth from 2010, the largest surge of any other company among the top 10. The company leaped two spots from third  2010 to beat out copycat-Samsung and take the number 1 position. According to the report, semiconductor purchases for the company’s products came in at $17.3 billion in 2011, ahead of Samsung’s $16.7 billion and HP’s $16.6 billion. In fact, last June, IHS iSuppli reported that Apple had become the world’s largest buyer of semiconductors in 2010.

The leading electronics manufacturers accounted for $105.6 billion in semiconductor purchases in 2011. That was a year over year increase of $1.8 billion, or 1.8 percent, from 2010. Apple’s performance in 2011 continued its growth pattern seen over the last five years, since the iPhone was first introduced in 2007.