China overtakes US as world’s largest smartphone market, with Samsung leading Apple

China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest market for smartphones, with Samsung’s marketshare well ahead of Apple, according to a new report.

According to figures published by DigiTimes, China now represents 22% of the world market for smartphones compared to 16% for the US, in a reversal of the situation a year ago.

As a whole, growth in smartphone demand across the Asia Pacific region is outpacing growth in the US, with demand across the region growing by 81% per annum. This is compared to a worldwide annual growth rate for smartphone shipments of 45%, and just 5% per annum in the US. Half of the world’s top 10 markets for smartphones are now in the Asia Pacific region.

Samsung has emerged as the market leader in China with a 22% marketshare, compared to 19% for Apple. Nokia remains in third place, with ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo and “white box” Android vendors also major competitors in the Chinese market.

The new figures seemingly confirm earlier reports about the dominance of Android relative to Apple iOS in the Chinese market.