Canalys: China is now a bigger smartphone market than the US

It's a time of change in the smartphone world and we've seen various analysts chime in. Now Canalys released its report and it contains an interesting detail - the US is no longer the biggest smartphone market in the world, as China overtook it.

During the first quarter of this year, there were 146 million smartphones shipped (up 45% compared to last year's Q1). The growth isn't even among the various countries though - the US saw only a 5% year-on-year increase, while shipments in the Asia Pacific soared 81%.

China saw the number of smartphone shipments double over last year's and the country gobbled up 22% of global smartphone shipments. In comparison, the US took just 16% of all shipments.

Samsung is the leading vendor of smartphones in China with 22% in Q1, while Apple takes second place with 19%. Nokia is in third place and analysts expect it to regain traction with their new Lumia lineup. Local makers like ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo are on the rise as well.

Android is doing quite well in China - a quarter of all droids went to China, where the OS accounted for two thirds of the shipments during Q1. And that's without access to Google Play - Canalys reports that the gap is filled by third party app stores, which are more popular there than anywhere else in the world.