Flash! Inevitable Scheduled to Occur! China Smartphone Market to Become World’s Biggest!

China is poised to oust the United States as the world’s top smartphone market as early as this year.

The latest figures from International Data Corporation indicate China’s share of the global smartphone market will rise to 20.7 percent, up from 18.2 percent in 2011. And that’s enough to surpass the U.S., though admittedly by a very slim margin. In 2012, the United States’s share of the world’s smartphone market is expected to decline to 20.6 percent, down from 21.3 percent in 2011.

Not a big slip, but enough to allow China to claim the title of top smartphone market.

Not that this wasn’t already an inevitability. After all, China is the world’s most populous country. And it recently became the first to reach one billion mobile phone subscribers. Really, it’s surprising that the country hasn’t snatched this title from the U.S. already.

But it will soon enough. Smartphone adoption in China has been spiking recently, driven by low-cost Android handsets. And with those devices increasing in number and mobile broadband becoming more accessible, it will only spike higher.

Said IDC analyst Wong Teck Zhung, “The gap [between China and the U.S.] will widen in the coming years. There will be no turning back this leadership changeover.”

Image: iStockphoto | aluxum