Forrester Research Inc said around 35 percent of subscribers in China were smartphone users by 2012. The company expects the percentage will not reach 64 percent until 2017.
Nielson admitted that the actual smartphone penetration rate may be lower than it reported because its interviews were only conducted in cities, excluding the large number of China's rural residents from the research.
Yet Chinese consumers are set to purchase more smart devices in the coming years, a move that will further increase the smartphone penetration rate.
In the third quarter of 2012, China shipped more than 60 million smartphones, roughly three times more than the country's personal computer shipments in the same quarter, said IT consultancy company IDC.
Lower purchase costs played a "very important" role in boosting China's smartphone user numbers, said Bryan Wang vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester.
"With the stiff competition in the 3G era, all three telecom operators have started to subsidize their devices for consumers. Therefore consumers are able to obtain smartphone devices at a much lower cost than before," he said.
At least 35-40 percent of the smartphones priced at around 1,000 yuan ($160) were sold through operator channels, Wang from Forrester added.
Devices priced less than 1,000 yuan were the key driver of increased demand for smartphones in China.
"It has been extremely successful getting more consumers using smartphones, as well as 3G services from the mobile operators - thanks to support from local mobile device manufacturers such as Lenovo Group and Huawei Technologies Co," said Wang.
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