Samsung tops in China's smartphone market as Apple drops to sixth

IDC released its ranking of the top smartphone manufacturers in China for the third quarter and no surprise, Samsung remains on top. China is the top mobile phone market in the world and its rankings consist of a combination of global leaders and hometown producers. One of the latter, Lenovo, is second with relatively unknown Coolpad moving up three spots to third. Dropping one spot to fourth is another local manufacturer, ZTE, with Chinese firm Huawei finishing fifth.

Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in China

Is there a major world wide producer missing from this top five? Did you say, Apple? The Cupertino based firm finished sixth in Chna during the third quarter, down from fourth place in the prior three month period. According to IDC, Apple's marketshare was less than 10% in the country during the period, which saw a record 60 million units shipped from China. The metrics firm expects Apple to snap back in the fourth quarter since the Apple iPhone 5 just received regulatory approval to be sold in the country and will launch on December 14th.

China has over 1 billion mobile phone users but less than 20%have 3G connectivity. Similar to the U.S., China's major carriers use subsidies on new phones in order to attract business. China Mobile is the largest carrier in the world and along with China Telecom and China Unicom, the operators have been pushing home-grown devices instead of phones made by the big global names.