Report: Android Rises to 90% of Smartphone Market in China

(Pre-photoshopped image from balanceofculture.com)

One of our favorite sources of stats, Beijing-based Analysys International, has come up with some China smartphone market share stats for 2012 Q3. The numbers show that Android has still not yet peaked in China, growing to 90.1 percent market share in Q3, compared with 82.8 percent in Q2 of this year.

The Analysys report is put together with smartphone sales and ownership figures, combined to reflect the state of the smartphone landscape in China. It shows Android’s amazing trajectory in the country, coming from a mere 58.2 percent share this time last year. A great deal of Android’s success is at the expense of Symbian and Nokia, with the creaky old mobile OS and lacklustre hardware crashing from 23.3 percent in 2011 Q3, to a one-foot-in-the-grave 2.4 percent now:

The early-mover advantage of Apple’s iOS hasn’t borne so much fruit as with Android, perhaps held back by a the highest average hardware cost, which is more of a barrier in China than in Europe or North America. Right now, the average cost of iPhone hardware is 3.25 times higher than for Android; and Android’s prices have been going down a lot despite also bringing much stronger specifications. The average Android price now is just 1,393 RMB (US$222):

Canalys recently observed that smartphone sales in China were up 199 percent this year, and projections for the end of 2013 suggest that Chinese citizens might have as many as half a billion smartphones by that time.

[Source: Analysys Internation @ Eguan – article in Chinese]