Android dominates China’s growing smartphone market

PanARMENIAN.Net - Android continues to dominate China’s growing smartphone market, as devices built on the Google-owned platform rocketed up to account for 55.4 percent of all active smartphones during the first quarter of 2012, up from 47.3 percent in the final quarter of 2011, according to The Next Web.

The figures, from an iiMedia report [Chinese], show that Android has continued to develop faster than the competition in China, although iOS made a small gain, increasing its share from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent.

The Apple platform is actually behind Nokia’s Symbian system, but the ageing platform continues its downward spiral in China, where its industry-wide representation dropped from 32.3 percent in Q4 2011 to 25.6 percent over the two quarters.

iiMedia also reveals that the number of active smartphones in China has now reached 252 million devices which, combined with Web-enabled feature phones, gives the country a total of 372 million mobile Web users.

Apple still has potential to broaden its reach and it remains negotiations with China Mobile over a deal to offer the iPhone to its subscribers, which number more than 650 million, when the two can overcome the 3G-compatibility issues.

An analysis of sales last year revealed that, during the final quarter of 2011, Android phones accounted for 68.4 percent of new smartphones, up from 33.6 percent in the first quarter of the year. Comparatively, the share of iOS rose from 4.1 percent to 5.7 percent,