Apple snags 7% of Chinese smartphone market in Q4

For the three month period ending last December, Apple owned 7% of the Chinese smartphone market. That is up from the 6% it owned in the third quarter, according to IDC. The fourth quarter was the first full quarter to measure iPhone sales in the country since the launch of the Apple iPhone 5s and the Apple iPhone 5c last September. The 7% ownership of the Chinese market places Apple as the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the country.

Remaining on top of the Chinese smartphone market is Apple's rival, Samsung. The Korean manufacturer owns 19% followed by Lenovo with 13%. The latter has just acquired Motorola from Google. Numbers three and four are Coolpad (11%) and Huawei (10%).

After Apple, in sixth place comes Xiaomi. The latter seems to have some pretty good coverage of both the low end and high end of the smartphone market, and plans on shipping 40 million units this year, twice as many as it shipped last year. With the entry level Xiaomi Hongmi and the unannounced high end Xiaomi Mi4, Apple's position in China is certainly threatened. IDC analyst Melissa Chou says "[Xiaomi] is still rising, at some point it could come into top five on the growth path it’s on."

But Apple should greatly benefit in the current quarter as it is the first period that will include iPhone sales made by the world's largest carrier, China Mobile. The carrier started offering the Apple iPhone to its 763 million subscribers on January 17th.

source: WSJ