While news websites regularly provide us with interesting mobile statistics, mere observation can also be a valuable source of information on the mobile market. In his recent post on mobiForge, DeviceAtlas’s CTO Ronan Cremin shared his discoveries on Chinese mobile market from his business trip to Beijing. 

Ronan’s discoveries on Chinese mobile users’ habits

Perhaps there are regions in China where feature phones are still in use, but, according to Ronan’s observations, it’s certainly not the case in Beijing where large-screen phablets overwhelmingly dominate the market. This obviously includes devices from Apple, Samsung and HTC. However in China domestic vendors such as Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi and Meizu are also hugely popular. DeviceAtlas’s mobile traffic data coincides with Ronan’s observations on the brands in China -- see the charts at the end of the article.

The large-screen handsets’ boom in China is a part of a wider trend. Worldwide phablet sales are expected to hit 24.4% market share with 592.9 million units shipped during 2018, according to a mobiForge’s mobile market statistics compilation. Moreover, phablets are expected to outsell tablets within the next few years.

mobiForge’s findings also indicated that the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi ranked the world’s third largest smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2014. Certainly one of the reasons for this growth is Xiaomi’s domestic expansion.

You can find out more on Chinese mobile market in Ronan Cremin’s article on mobiForge.

Check out some notable Chinese market statistics

Country-specific mobile market statistics are easily accessible via DeviceAtlas’s Data Explorer. See China’s most popular devices, screen sizes, vendors and operating systems in the charts below. As you can see, the phablets’ popularity is not actually reflected here because our data covers the whole country, not just Beijing.

You can delve into our immense mobile market database here (a free DeviceAtlas account is required).

Top devices in China

Top screen sizes in China

Top vendors in China

Photo: Michael Coglan