China Becomes World's Biggest Smartphone Buyer

[beijingwalker]

China Becomes World's Biggest Smartphone Buyer
NOVEMBER 23, 2011, 4:23 A.M. ET

STOCKHOLM—China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest smartphone market by volume in the third quarter, a research report by Strategy Analytics shows.

According to the report, shipments of smartphones in China grew 58% in the third quarter from the previous quarter to 24 million units. In the U.S., smartphone shipments fell 7% to 23 million units.
Read More

China Real Time: China Outstrips U.S. in Smartphones

In a statement, Strategy Analytics analyst Tom Kang said the growing usage of smartphones in China was owing to aggressive subsidizing by operators of high-end models such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone, as well as the growing availability of low-cost models running Google Inc.'s Android platform.

Nokia Corp. had the largest share of China's smartphone market in the third quarter, with 29%. Strategy Analytics added that both Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Apple are chasing hard.

"If China Telecom launches a CDMA iPhone 4S early next year, then we expect Apple's share to spike further," the research firm said.

It also said that HTC Corp. and Sony Ericsson substantially increased their market share in the third quarter, as their Android models captured shelf space in the major cities of east and south China.

 

[fallstuff]

It was just a matter of time.

 

[beijingwalker]

Morgan Stanley thinks China could surpass U.S. as Apple’s largest market

October 27, 2011 1:11pm by Phil Hornshaw

China is currently Apple’s second-largest hardware market, seeing big-time growth in smartphone and tablet sales during the last year. But a new report suggests it’s only going to keep getting bigger.

A survey conducted by Morgan Stanley found that interest in Apple’s iPhone has surpassed that of Nokia’s 3G smartphone offerings, the former leader in the country. The report finds that, for Chinese users’ next handset, more than a third of respondents prefer the iPhone, which is more than twice the nearest competitor, Nokia. The financial firm suggests that China, currently Apple’s second biggest market, could eventually surpass the U.S. to become its biggest business region.

Apple said during its quarterly earnings call earlier this month that China has quickly become a huge market for the technology company. In the quarter ending in September, the China region (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s revenue with $4.5 billion in sales. It made up 12 percent of Apple’s total revenue for 2011, $28.7 billion.

 

[asianamerican]

There are 1.3 billion people in China. Sooner or later China is going to tbe largest buyer of everything. Then a couple of decades India will join the list.

I just hope we humans come up with something along the line of Star Trek's replicator.

 

[tallboy123]

More people,more buyers....as people income rise they will tend to buy shiny smartphones so the number rises

 

[Jade]

China is beating the US in numbers because of its huge population. As one of the previous poster said - it just a matter of time.

 

[Imran Khan]

as china has world no-1 population

 

[beijingwalker]

yes,China now is the world No.1 buyer of private cars,PCs,cellphones and has the most online population in the world.soon China will be No.1 in everything ,and then China's economy will be ready to surpass US.