With China’s growing economy spreading the wealth all across the mainland, the smartphone market in the region is growing like never before.

“China`s smartphone market saw strong growth throughout 2008 with shipments showing a 30 percent increase over the previous year,” reports market research firm In-Stat. Smartphones accounted for 15.3 percent of total mobile phone shipments in China last year, up from 12 percent in 2007, the firm finds in a new report.

Last week, AFP reported that Chinese vendors had already cashed in on fake iPhones before Apple Inc. officially launched its gadget in the world’s biggest mobile phone market. China Unicom has started selling iPhone (News - Alert) in China.

In-Stat projects China`s smartphone shipments to more than triple by 2013.

And, the researcher says, the next wave of smartphone market growth will be driven by lower barriers to entry in both OS and chipset platform solutions.

"Mobile Internet applications, GPS, and multimedia functionality were the most important drivers," said Alex Liu, In-Stat analyst, in a release. "In the smartphone OS marketplace, Symbian (News - Alert) retained its leading position and saw a small share increase in 2008 due to steady growth of Nokia smartphone sales and a drop in Linux smartphone sales."

The high-tech market analyst predicts that a free and complete smartphone software platform from OHA and the Symbian Foundation will fuel smartphone market growth in the coming years.

Gartner said last week that smartphone shipments will account for 37 percent of all handset sales by 2012, generating revenue of $191 million.

The research firm said it expects worldwide smartphone shipments to grow by 29 percent in the year 2009.

Yet, smartphone makers cannot be encouraged by this report, because another market research firm iSuppli said last week that it expects worldwide unit shipments of legitimate cell phones to fall by 8 percent in 2009.