(ECNS) -- With a market share of less than 20 percent, smartphones priced at around 1,000 yuan ($145) or below have faded from the mainstream, according to Beijing Business Today, citing a report released by Newzoo, a mobile app market research agency.
It's the first time that such low-end smartphones have lost their ground on such a scale.
Handsets priced at 1,000 yuan or less had contributed greatly to the widespread use of smartphones in China. At their peak, they accounted for 70 percent of sales for many domestic manufacturers.
This situation reversed in 2016.
In December of that year, the number of cell phones priced above 2,000 yuan accounted for more than half of all commonly used models for the first time, while the share of phones that cost between 1,000 and 1,999 yuan decreased by 2.7 percent over the same period the year before while the market size of one-thousand smartphones had shrunk to 20 percent, said the report released on Sunday.
Almost all Chinese manufacturers made efforts to tap the 2,000-to-3,000-yuan segment in 2016, leaving low-end models largely abandoned.
Industry analysts attribute shrinkage in the market for cheaper phones to their deceasing user value. Consumers are willing to pay for a more satisfying cell phone, they say.