Apple's piece of China's smartphone market has almost halved to just 10 per cent in the second quarter as fanbois wait for the next iPhone model or even, gasp, switch brands.

For the first time, more people in China were interested in buying smartphones than feature mobes, but Apple's iDevices were only the third favourite in the country, bean-counters at IDC said. Lenovo, whose phones are only sold in Asia, scurried up from seventh place on the list to shove Apple out of second place with 11 per cent of the market.

"There are two things in play," IDC analyst TZ Wong told Reuters. "One is seasonal, people know the new phone is coming. And the second is that the alternatives are becoming much more attractive than a year ago. The iPhone didn't change much over the year."

Samsung phones were still the favourite in the country, cornering 19 per cent of the market, while Apple went all the way down to fourth place behind ZTE at third, leaving HTC in fifth place.

Total smartphone shipments in China topped 44 million, just over half of all mobile shipments. There are more than a billion subscribers in the country, which is set to overtake the US as the largest smartphone market this year. ®