The China Smartphone Market in 2014, by market shares, vendors and trends.

Overall, at the world level, the Smartphone Market is on the exciting curve driven inter alia by: operator subsidy, increasing services with value added, mobile games, mobile videos, direct sales, online/offline, low-cost phones, flash sales, growing deployment of 3G/4G networks, and a wide range of models in the low-end and mid-range segment.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), nearly 420.7 million smartphones have been shipped to China in 2014, with Year-on-Year (YoY) growth of 19% in 2014Q4 as compared to 11% in 2014Q3.

‘’The market was able to grow in 2014Q4 due to its growth in 4G phones. Also, while the share of phones sold through operators dropped, the number of phones sold through eTailers increased (share increased from single to double-digit YoY) due to the popularity of eTailers such as jd.com and tmall.com.  Apple's launch of larger screen sized phones also helped to contribute to the increase in shipments," says Tay Xiaohan, Senior Market Analyst with IDC Asia/Pacific's Client Devices team.