The United States has seen a very large increase in the number of people adapting to the smartphone over the past couple of years. The smartphones are getting more affordable, apps are getting more useful and people are able to justify the switch from a regular cell phone. For the third quarter and for the first time, China has sold more smartphones than the United States. China is easily the largest smartphone market in the world and it obvious that smartphone makers would love to get their phones in the hands of millions of people.
China has more people and when the smartphone craze takes off, China is going to be leaving the United States behind, far behind. For the third quarter, China sold just more smartphones than the United States with 23.9 million units sold. The United States reported only 23.3 million units sold for the same time period. China has over 1 billion people and if the smartphone industry is going to grow anywhere, it will be in China. According to experts, China is expected to pass up 1 billion mobile connections by May of 2012.
Handset makers like Nokia are all over the news and in that quarter actually shipped almost 7 million smartphones, which is the most from any handset vendor. Samsung shipped 4.2 million phones and came in second and right now the two companies account for almost 50 percent of China’s mobile smartphone market. In the United States the numbers are a little different where HTC and Apple account for more than 44 percent of all smartphones and the two companies have shipped about 10.4 million units during this time. It is a different world in China’s mobile market, but even still China is seeing a 58 percent jump from one year ago. Now that Apple is trying to get into the market, the numbers are going to be different the next time around for sure.
The low-cost Android smartphones and the expansion of the mobile broadband networks are surely causing the increase in smartphone numbers. Mobile carriers are subsidizing the smartphones as much as possible to gain more contract subscribers and handset from brands like ZTE is making it easier for Chinese consumers to switch. With more Android phones making their way into China and the subsidies, the 1 billion connections by May is an easy target.
