Apple Unlikely to Catch Samsung in China

A hardware incompatibility due to Apple’s strategy of standardizing its product offerings across the world will keep it from matching Samsung’s dominant share of China’s smartphone market, according to market research firm Gartner.

Currently Samsung Electronics holds a 24.3% share of China’s smartphone market, making it the clear market leader as of the end of 2011. Apple had only a 7.5% share. China is far and away the world’s leading smartphone market, with over three times the number of users as in the US.

The rankings aren’t likely to change. Apple can’t supply handsets to China Mobile, the nation’s leading carrier with 655 million of China’s 988 million mobile phone users. Apple refuses to customize its handsets to the TD-SCDMA 3G standard. Instead its smartphone marketing in China is solely through China Unicom, the nation’s number two carrier with a 34% share of mobile users.