China has increasingly been an important part of the tech world. Specifically, given the huge market that China is, it has immense potential for tech companies to market and sell their products. This is now manifest in the fact that in terms of total smartphone shipments, China has surpassed US to secure the top spot. And it has accomplished this with the help of huge sales that iPhone 4S is triggering.
Back in 2011, U.S. accounted for a whooping 22 percent of global smartphone sales while China was at 16 percent. A year onwards and in the first quarter of 2012, it is China that now accounts for 22 percent of global sales while US stands at 16 percent. And while the US market seems to have somewhat saturated, China still has hundreds of millions of prospective users who may switch to a smartphone in future.
This is evident from the fact that over the last one year, smartphone shipments in US increased by some 5 percent. Over the same period of time, the shipments in China rose by 45 percent!
Interestingly, it seems that the overall smartphone sales in China have been significantly enhanced by the launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S. Apple has long been trying to break into the Chinese market, to access hundreds of millions of mobile users. And now that Apple has been able to launch its iPhone 4S in the country, it seems to be wildly popular. During the first quarter this year, of the total smartphone sales in China, 19 percent came from iPhone. Samsung stood second in number in terms of sales.
What is even more astonishing is the fact that iPhone is still not available with the largest carrier in China, which boasts more than 500 million subscribers! Apple is currently in talks with China Mobile and if it is able to seal a deal, it may be able to reach out to another few hundreds million subscribers, which will massively trigger iPhone’s sales.
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