China’s total mobile phone shipments have reached 110 million in Q2 2013. Smartphone shipments, a subset of mobile phone shipments, reached 86 million, growing by 10% on a quarterly basis, according to research firm IDC.

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“The smartphone market has maintained a two-digit quarter-on-quarter growth rate in Q2 due to two reasons. First, the substantial shipments of low-end smartphones at a unit price of less than RMB 800 that support China Mobile’s 3G network. Second, the shipments prepared by mobile phone vendors to meet the market demands of students during the summer vacation,” says Antonio Wang, Associate Director for Client System Research, Imaging, Printing & Document Solution Research, Research Operation Center, IDC China.

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"The sharp increase in shipments of low-end China Mobile smartphones has driven the growth of Lenovo and Coolpad. On a separate note, affected by the sluggish sales of iPhone 5, Apple’s market share has declined dramatically, but its performance is expected to remarkably improve with the launch of the new iPhone,” says James Yan, Senior Analyst for China Mobile Phone Market, IDC China.

Driven by the subsidies of operators and the strong demand of consumers for upgrading mobile phones, IDC forecasts that China’s smartphone shipments will reach 360 million in 2013.

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With the issuance of 4G licenses and the launch of Apple's new iPhones by China Mobile, IDC expects China’s smartphone shipments to exceed 450 million in 2014, including 120 million smartphones that would support 4G functions and over 32 million smartphones that would adopt China Mobile’s TD-LTE air interface.

That would benefit the upstream 4G chip and screen vendors, midstream mobile phone vendors and APP developers, and channel distributors and accessory vendors, which would in turn, accelerate other innovations in the mobile communication and Internet industry.

"It is difficult to displace Android’s dominant position in the Chinese market within a short period of time, but IDC predicts that its share in China’s mobile phone operating system market will reach the peak in 2013, and that the mobile phone vendors and telecom operators will adopt new operating systems with a more open attitude,” says Yan.

Thanks to its cooperation with China Mobile and the launch of low-cost iPhone, iOS will see a rapid growth in 2014, and IDC expects its market share to double that of 2013. In addition, the development of Firefox OS, Tizen and Linux-based Aliyun OS will enable healthy competition to be maintained among China’s smartphone operating systems, although they are currently not in the leading position.

The market share of 5-inch-plus screen smartphones will continue to expand. With the increasing demand of Chinese consumers for large-screen mobile phones and the impetus by telecom operators and mobile phone vendors, IDC forecasts that the market share of 5-inch-plus screen smartphones will increase from nearly 20% in 2013 to over 50% in 2017.

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