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China—World’s Biggest Smartphone Market

With its many significant advantages over the feature phones, including which the high-speed data access via Wi-Fi and the capability for running third-party applications, smartphone has penetrated the mobile phone market in many countries, further changing the way people communicate. By 2012, about 18 percent of the total world population possesses some sort of smartphone, compared to 12 percent in 2010 and 8 percent in 2008. China seems to be one of the biggest markets. In fact, reports show that 23.9 million smartphones shipped in China during the third quarter of 2011, slightly above the 23.3 million shipments in the U.S. Now China is already the world’s largest smartphone market based on shipment volumes and device activation numbers.

Samsung take the Lead, Apple Occupies 9.5 percent of the Market

In 2012, China’s smartphone market is still in its growing stage. According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the user attention for smartphone in China’s mobile phone market has exceeded 90 percent in March 2012. The top three vendors are Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Nokia dropped out of the top three and the major local vendors such as Xiaomi, ZTE and Coolpad all gained rise in their user attention rank. As the graph shows, Samsung becomes the most popular brand in China’s smartphone market, taking 22.1 percent of the market attention. As for the price level, statistics shows that the Chinese consumers are mainly looking at smartphones ranging from 1000 to 2000RMB. The search volume reaches 34 percent. The price level above 3000RMB only accumulates 31 percent of the search volume which indicates that phones with price below 3000RMB still occupy the mainstream of the China smartphone market.

Android is the Big Boss

As is shown in the graph, Android has become unquestionably the most popular mobile operating system in the China smartphone market. With the attention ratio of 74.5 percent, Android exceeds others whose ratios are all below 10 percent. The reason for Android’s popularity partly owes to the adoption of it by some of the low-cost local brands such as ZTE. And as we mentioned above, as the majority of the Chinese people still prefer to phones priced below 3000RMB, it is easy to see Android winning most people’s preference.

Documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

http://micgadget.com/27390/sub-200-smartphones-expecting-to-proliferate-in-china-by-2015/

http://zdc.zol.com.cn/287/2877615_all.html#p2877759