Chinese mad for smartphones

10th Jul 2012 13:34

If any more indication were needed of the rise of the aspirational middle classes in the People's Republic of China, it has come in the form of acknowledgement that more smartphones than so-called feature phones are now being shipped in what is the world's biggest mobile phone market.In June, 56.9% of all phones shipped in China were smartphones, the third month in a row that the devices have out-shipped the cheaper feature phone handsets, data from the Chinese Information Technology ministry revealed.There is no official definition of the difference between a smartphone and a feature phone, but a technology Luddite in the Sharecast office offered the suggestion that a smartphone is a hand-held computing device which happens to be able to make phone calls whereas a feature phone is predominantly used for making calls and sending text messages.In a world where a leading UK seller of mobile phones ran an advertising campaign in which it was suggested people might be ashamed of the mobile phone they owned, there is considerably more cachet attached to owning a smartphone than to ownership of a feature phone, and the cost of ownership reflects this.Some 195m mobile phones were shipped in China in the first half of 2012, with around 48% of those being smartphones; since April, however, smartphone shipments have outweighed shipments of cheaper, less flashy devices.The Chinese do not seem to have fully got the hang of the idea of paying 50% more for a device which is arguably only 5% better, however, as Apple does not have anywhere near the market presence it does in Western markets.According to Beijing based research house Analysys, Android, the operating system sponsored by Google, had a 76.7% share of the smartphone market in the first quarter of 2012. Apple's operating system was the third most popular operating system, trailing Nokia's obsolete Symbian operating system, which had an 11.8% market share.Those numbers have prompted some analysts to cast doubt on the figures and the Chinese ministry's definition of what constitutes a smartphone. Technology web site The Register quotes Gartner analyst Sandy Shen as saying: "Smartphones accounted for 18 per cent of the total mobile phone shipment in 2011, increasing to 28.7 per cent in 2012.""On the installed base, the numbers will be even lower. So I'm not sure how they got the 50 per cent, but smartphone is the only segment that is growing while others like basic phones and feature phones are declining," she added.Meanwhile, The Register has been speculating that Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, may not have turned down the company's recently declared maiden dividend, after all, and may have instead channelled the money to pay off Proview, the Chinese company which had a prior claim on the Ipad name.In a deal which is certain to interest the lawyers at British terrestrial television company ITV, Apple paid $60m to the Chinese monitor company in June to settle the dispute over the name, a sum which Proview founder Yang Rongshan observed was noted by many to be similar to the $75m pay-out Cook was entitled to in dividends.Apple thought it had bought the rights to the Ipad/iPad name in 2009 when it paid Proview Taiwan £35,000, but the Chinese firm maintained that only its Shenzhen-based affiliate had the legal right to sell the name for use in China. Apple has reportedly been working on a high definition television product which, presumably will be marketed as an iTV, a name which may cause confusion in the UK, where ITV has been operating as a commercial broadcaster since 1955.