China, the world's biggest smartphone market, has produced fewer mobile phones and the new versions in 2017 pointing to a slowdown in one of successful segments of China's manufacturing sector in recent years. Mobile phone shipments reached 491 million last year while only 1,054 new types of cell phones were rolled out, down 12.3 per cent and 27.1 per cent respectively, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) said today. Shipments of domestic mobile phone brands fell by 12.4 per cent year on year to reach 436 million last year, accounting for about 88.8 per cent of total shipments. China's mobile phone shipments started to fall last March, with the biggest monthly year-on-year drop of 32.5 per cent in December. Chinese telecom giant Huawei said its smartphone shipments reached 153 million last year, grabbing a 10-per cent global market share to become the third-largest international smartphone player. Chinese mobile firms in India, one of the word's fastest growing cell phone markets has increased in a big way in recent years with companies like Oppo and Xiaomi grabbing major market share. Analysts said that the Chinese smartphone market is expected to see a reshuffle as smartphone consumption slows down with almost all Chinese people owning at least one mobile phone. In November 2017, about 1.4 billion mobile phone subscriptions had been registered in China. The number of mobile phone subscribers in China has been skyrocketing since 2011, hitting a new landmark of more than 1.25 billion users in April 2014.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)