As China leads the world in smartphone shipments, top handsetvendors are raising their stakes in the nation, and will likelybring more exclusive products and lower-end devices to the market,resulting in fierce competition, according to analysts. Several research firms are reporting that China has surpassed theU.S. in smartphone shipments or sales, with some of them seeing thetrend since last year's third quarter. Analysts expect China tocontinue leading the market given that the country already has 1billion mobile phone subscribers, with only about 15 percent ofthem on the nation's faster 3G networks. "There is still plenty of room for it to grow," said Nicole Peng,an analyst with research firm Canalys.
At the same time, other keyregions including the U.S. and Europe already have mature markets,and are still recovering from weak economic conditions. "So Chinawill be a very important engine for smartphone growth this year,"she said. In this year's first quarter, China's smartphone shipments saw a102 percent year-over year growth, according to Canalys.
The U.S.shipments, in contrast, grew by only 5 percent. China's emergence as a top smartphone market represents a shiftfrom the country primarily being a major manufacturer of mobilephones for overseas markets, analysts noted. Now handset vendorsare spending greater resources in the country's smartphone space,whether it be Apple launching the iPhone 4S on China Telecom, Nokia moving its Asia Pacific headquarters toBeijing, or HTC launching smartphones exclusively for China. But to attract more customers, handset vendors will need to focuson China's low-end market, where smartphones are often priced at1,000 yuan (US$158) without a contract, according to analysts.
For this year, China's smartphone sales are projected to reach atleast 140 million units, up from 77 million in 2011, said CK Lu, ananalyst with research firm Gartner. Much of the growth will occurwith no-contract smartphones priced between 1,000 and 1,500 yuan,he added. "3G smartphones will be hitting a price where users can replacetheir 2G feature phone with a 3G smartphone," Lu said. "It will bea huge replacement, with people moving from 2G phones to 3Gsmartphones." This will mean more lower-end phones reaching the Chinese market,resulting in price decreases. Thomas Kang, an analyst with StrategyAnalytics, said prices could begin reaching at $75 to the $150range.
This contrasts with the U.S. market, where consumersgenerally buy smartphones that cost between $350 to $500 without acontract. In the future, more international handset vendors will also likelychoose to launch their products first in China, or decide torelease smartphones exclusively made for the Chinese market, saidTeck Zhung Wong, an analyst with research firm IDC. "The potentialfor the Chinese smartphone market is so huge, they have no choicebut to accommodate the demand," he said. "One negative thing of putting all this focus on China right now isthat it's going to be an ultra-competitive market," he added."Anyone who is looking at entering the China market has got toprepare for a brutal fight." In the first quarter, Samsung Electronics had the largestsmartphone market share in China at 22 percent, with Apple insecond place at 19 percent, according to Canalys.
Nokia, ZTE andHuawei Technologies had market shares each at about 10 percent. I am an expert from Apparel, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as bruce springsteen shirts , wholesale brazilian bikinis.
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