Apple controls 80% of China’s premium smartphone market

New evidence suggests that Apple’s much-criticized China strategy, of targeting the high end of the Chinese smartphone market and ignoring the low , may be working better than overall market-share data suggest. The evidence comes from Umeng, a Flurry-like app analytics firm that is installed, according to Benedict Evans, on a large share of the smartphone apps in widespread use in China.

Countering the idea that China’s smartphone market is only interested in cheap phones, Umeng, the nation’s largest analytics firm, has issued a report for 2013 outlining that 27 percent of China’s smartphones cost over $500, and that 80 percent of those are iPhones. Highlighted by analyst Benedict Evans, Umeng’s report (embedded below) details that China’s market for smartphones and tablets exploded in 2013, nearly doubling from 380 million devices at the beginning of the year to more than 700 million by year end.