Chinese 4G Users Hit 770 Million in 2016

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:42PM EST · Published Feb 18, 8:35AM EST

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Chinese 4G Users Hit 770 Million in 2016 — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”655223″ placement=”ros”]The number of people who use connected 4G devices in China reached 770 million last year, well over two times the U.S. population. No wonder it has become a bloody battleground for markets of smartphones.

According to the People’s Daily:

The number of 4G users in China reached 770 million by the end of 2016, accounting for 58 percent of all the country’s mobile phone users, said Zhang Feng, spokesperson and chief engineer for the Ministry of Industry and Informational Technology, at a news briefing in Beijing on Feb. 17.

China has made great progress in the research and development of TD-LTE, the nation’s fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications technology, even forming a relatively complete industry chain that includes the 4G system, terminals, chips and meters. 4G technology has achieved industrialization and global commercialization. China’s TD-LTE-Advanced has been accepted as a standard for 4G around the world.

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Companies based outside of China have tried, with some success, to break in to the smartphone market in China. First among these are Samsung and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). Each has done relatively well but faces a trio of entrenched local companies. According to research firm Canalys:

[I]n 2016, Huawei took the top spot in the market with 76.2 million shipments, a small lead ahead of runner-up Oppo with 73.2 million units, followed by Vivo in third place at 63.2 million units. The smartphone market recovery was driven by several factors. Leading domestic manufacturers Huawei, Oppo and Vivo invested heavily in new product and channel developments. Canalys Research Analyst Jessie Ding said “In 2016, the top three brands were competing with new product launches, go-to-market strategies and brand building. Also, their flagship products started to contribute to a much larger part of their total shipments and created a halo effect for the rest of the portfolio, like Samsung and Apple.”

Apple has fallen to fifth place in the race.

China’s smartphone market is not entirely mature like that of the United States. And it has just started work on 5G networks. Market share remains critical in China, particularly for the current “losers” like Apple, but at least the pie is growing.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.