For the last couple of years, Apple and Samsung were hoping that they would be able to make up for slumping sales in the US and Europe by pushing into the huge Chinese market. After an initial success two years ago, Apple has seen its market share slump and Samsung has been doing even worse.

Beancounters at Digitimes Research said that there were 124.2 million smartphones shipped in the China market in the fourth quarter of 2016, increasing eight percent on the quarter and 5.3 percent on the year, accounting for 29.6 percent of the global total.

However Chinese vendors together took 82 percent of the shipments and international ones for 18 percent, Digitimes Research indicated.

Oppo was the largest China-based vendor, which sucked up a fifth of all the shipments, followed by Vivo with 18.7 percent, Huawei with 12 percent and GiONEE with 4.3 percent. Xiaomi Technology had 3.9 percent and Meizu  3.8 percent.

Apple had a market share of 13.2 percent and Samsung Electronics 4.1 percent.

Digitimes said that shipments in the first quarter of 2017 are expected to decrease to 100.2 million smartphones from the last quarter.