China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest smart device market, according to mobile analytics firm, Flurry.
Following a year after being named the fastest-growing market for smart devices, China is expected to account for 246 million active Android and iOS smartphones, as well as tablets at the end of February; the U.S. is estimated to account for 230 million. Comparatively, the U.S. was leading the market with 222 million smart devices in January; China had 221 million.
"The U.S. will not take back the lead from China, given the vast difference in population per country," said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry. "China has over 1.3 billion people while the U.S. has just over 310 million. Considering that the U.S. has the world's third-largest population, the only other country that could feasibly overtake China sometime in the future is India, with a population of just over 1.2 billion."
India had an install base of 19 million smart devices in January, in which it tied ninth place with Russia and Brazil. Coming in third was the U.K., accounting for 43 million smart devices, while South Korea (30 million) and Japan (29 million) completed the top five.
As for the growth between January 2012 and January 2013, Colombia boasted a growth rate of 278 percent; China experienced growth of 209 percent. Vietnam followed Columbia in second with 266 percent. Rounding out the top 5 were Turkey (247 percent), Ukraine (237 percent) and Egypt (211 percent).
Flurry based the aforementioned data on information attained by tracking more than 2.4 billion app sessions each day across more than 275,000 applications globally.
