While lacking availability on China’s largest mobile carrier, the iPhone’s market share in China has grown from 9.9 percent a year ago, up to 17.3 percent in the June quarter.
Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf’s quarterly report on the smartphone industry was issued on Monday, and identified the “big news” of the quarter as the emergence of China as the leading smartphone market. Smartphone shipments in China grew 164 percent year over year to 33.1 million units in the June quarter, topping the 25 million units sold in the U.S.
According to Gartner, much of the iPhone’s growth over the year stems from the launch of the iPhone on China Telcom this year.
While Apple does have deals in place with both China Telcom, and China Unicom, the company has yet to make a partnership with China Mobile, the largest wireless provider in the world with more than 650 million subscribers. Some reports have suggested that the next iPhone will be compatible with China Mobile’s proprietary network.
Apple’s 17.3 percent share in China was far behind leader Google’s Android platform, which topped the charts with 69.5 percent of smartphones sold in the country. Apple took second place, while Nokia was third with an 11.2 percent share.
“The surge in China can be traced in part to the introduction of smartphones at materially lower prices that made them competitive with feature phones,” Wolf wrote. “A material percentage of these sales were captured by second-tier Chinese manufacturers.”