According to Flurry, China has become the largest market for smartphones in the world. While the total was even through January (222 million in the U.S. versus 221 million in China) it is believed that by the end of February 2013, China will have 246 million devices compared to 230 million in the U.S.
The U.S. is not likely to take back the lead from China, due to China having four times the population of the U.S. at 1.3 billion. The U.S and China have the highest rate of device adoption and five times the active installed base than that of the U.K., the world’s third largest market.
China saw a 209 percent rate of growth on top of a base of 71 million devices from January 2012 over the past year, not leading the world but nonetheless impressive. The four BRIC countries are not all among the top 12 countries in terms of percentage growth (Brazil and Russia don’t make the grade), but all four are among the top 12 when calculating the number of net active devices added per market (i.e., Brazil +11.5 million, Russia +12.0 million, India +12.4 million, China +149.5 million).
“In this new era of mobile computing, sparked by a confluence of powerful innovation across microprocessors, cloud storage and network speeds, Apple and Google have helped create the fastest adopted technology revolution in history, 10X faster than that of the PC Revolution and 3X that of the Internet Boom. And now, as the largest and fastest modernizing country in the world, Chinese consumers lead that revolution,” concludes Flurry’s Peter Farago.
Source: Blog.Flurry.com {link no longer active}
