Digitimes Research said that 112.3 million smartphones shipped in Q3 in China, up 5.2% from Q2 and 5.8% on Q3 2015 and representing 30.9% of the global market. Brands based outside China shipped 17.1 million units (15.2% share, but 2.8% down from Q2 and a long way down (36.7%) from last year.
The growth is because telcos have been promoting new smartphone sales in the low end to move subscribers to 4G services. The firm said that at the end of the third quarter, China Mobile had 480.7 million 4G subscribers, China Telecom 107.5 million and China Unicom 88.9 million.
Among China-based vendors, Oppo had the largest market share at 19.9% of shipments, followed by Vivo with 15.9%, Huawei Technologies 12.1%, Xiaomi Technology 6.3%, GiONEE 5.5%, LeEco 3.8%, Meizu 3.7%, ZTE 2.1%, Coolpad 1.9%, Lenovo 1.6% and Hisense 1.2%. Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC were the three largest international vendors with market shares of 9.3%, 5.1% and 0.4% respectively.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, the company forecast that 118.4 million smartphones will ship in the China market, including 22.5 million units by non-China-based international vendors.
