China has jumped 164 percent to 33.1 million smartphones sold in the past quarter, becoming the world’s largest smartphone market, according to a quarterly report by Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf.

The United States is second in the race with 25 million units sold in in the same period.

Wolf speculates that the reason for such rapid growth in China is attributed to the low prices of smartphones there.

“The surge in China can be traced in part to the introduction of smartphones at materially lower prices that made them competitive with feature phones,” he writes in his report. “A material percentage of these sales were captured by second-tier Chinese manufacturers.”

Market researcher Niko Partners suggests the number of mobile gamers in China will top at 192 million this year, surpassing the number of PC players.

Among mobile operating systems, Apple's iOS took a 17.3 percent share according to data from Gartner. Much of its growth from 9.9 percent a year ago stems from the launch of the iPhone on China Telecom this year, but the iPhone still isn’t available on China’s largest carrier, China Mobile.

“The iPhone is an iconic brand that virtually sells itself, translating into a subscriber acquisition cost that is far lower than the SAC on competing smartphones,” wrote Wolf.

Apple's 17.3 percent share in China was well behind Google's Android platform, which dominated with 69.5 percent of smartphones sold in the country. Apple took second place, while Nokia finished in third with an 11.2 percent share.