China's high-end smartphone market grows rapidly

China's high-end smartphone market is maintaining rapid expansion, a recent report has said.

The average price of a smartphone on the Chinese market stood at 2,523 yuan (about 377 U.S. dollars) last year, a notable rise from 1,623 yuan in 2014, according to a report released Tuesday by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

Smartphones with prices below 1,000 yuan saw a sharp drop in market share, shrinking from 49 percent in 2014 to 15 percent in 2018, data from the report showed.

Smartphones priced between 1000-1999 yuan dominated last year's market with a 43-percent share, while those in the price ranges of 3000-3999 yuan and above 4000 yuan saw year-on-year growth of 3 percentage points to account for 10 percent and 13 percent of the market respectively.

The report added that smartphones in China's market saw a continued improvement in performance with larger and higher definition screens.

Last year, the country's mobile phone shipments reached 414 million units, 90 percent of which were Chinese-brand mobile phones.