China’s Smartphone market – what will dominate??

Despite all the hype, Andriod is still small among different smartphone platform in China. Researcher estimated there were only about 250,000 – 280,000 Andriod phone China, at the end of October. Nevertheless, industry experts have high hope in the free and open-source OS. Many phone manufactures have embraced it as the de-facto smartphone OS, as it allows them to easily control applications preloading and distribution. HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and Chinese local phone markets, such as Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Meizu, Coolpad, etc., have all launched their version of Andriod phone.

MediaTek, which supplies the chipset of about a quarter of all mobile phones in China, also started shipping Android supported chips since October. This will makes Android affordable to the mass market. Already, there are Android phones selling at RMB 1000 (about US$140) a piece in Shenzhen. Many expected next year, Andriod phone will flood the China market.

Surprisingly, there are more Blackberry than Andriod phones in China. Researchers estimated there are more than 300,000 Blackberry phone in China. Blackberry has been the love of bankers and traders since day one. As long as this group of human being (or animals depending on your perspective) stay alive, Blackberry will always find its fans.

As of Apple’s iPhone, which started the whole mobile internet revolution in the West, experts believe it will remain a niche market for high end users in China. Its price, about RMB5000, is too high for the common white collars, who are earning about RMB3000-5000 per month. Researchers estimated currently there are about 1-2 million iPhone supplied by the official channel, China Unicom, and another 3-4 million imported from places like Hong Kong and U.S.

Although many have little faith in Nokia’s Symbian platform, experts believe it will remain a significant player, if not the largest. Finally, Window mobile, which almost everyone has forgotten until Microsoft launched WP7, experts believe it will capture certain portion of the high end market, together with iPhone and some most expensive Android phones.

By the way, Data Center of China Internet (DCCI) has forcasted by 2013, there will be more smartphones in China than the feature phones (the not-so-smart ones). Currently, the research said smartphone only has 16% of the market. The following is DCCI’s forecast. (The blue indicate feature phone and the orange smartphone.

Source: DATA CENTER OF THE CHINA INTERNET

Link to full article