Nokia has the lead with 69 percent, while Motorola comes in second with 20-percent market share

Jan 26, 2009 11:54 GMT  ·  By

It seems that the mobile phone market in China is dominated by two of the biggest players in the industry, namely Nokia and Motorola. Together, the two makers account for 90 percent of the smartphone segment in the Chinese market, which is seen as one of the most lucrative markets in the world.

According to a recently published report, during the third quarter of last year, Nokia held around 69 percent of the smartphone market in China, while Motorola was placed second with 20 percent. HTC and Samsung were also placed among the first four players, yet their market share was much lower compared to the first two. During the third quarter of 2008, around 7.5 million smartphones were shipped in the country.

TelecomTiger also reports that unit sales grew in Q3 by marginal by 0.6 percent compared to the previous quarter, while revenues went up by 4.5 percent sequentially, up to a total of 18.17 billion Yuan. According to the report, the biggest player on the Chinese market will remain Nokia courtesy of its wide product portfolio, which also includes smartphones that sport rather attractive price tags.

When it comes to operating systems, the largest market share would go to Symbian, which accounted for 71.3 percent of the mobile phone market segment. The next two major players were Linux and Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform. Google's Android platform had a poor performance on the market, yet it is expected to become more competitive in the near future.

TelecomTiger does not name the market study it has based its numbers on. It would be interesting to see how the market share of the big players will change throughout this year, considering the economic crisis, while Android's performance will be a thing worth watching as well.

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Nokia owned 69 percent of the smartphone market in China
Symbian accounted for 71.3 percent of the market
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