By Star Chang, posted Jul 25, 2012 at 9:45 AM, 799 views,

Most-recognized Handset Brand in China, Apple Ranks No.1

Baidu’s brand awareness billboard ranked Apple’s iPhone as the most-recognized handset brand in China. A total of six international brands are in the top 10 chart, the rest are domestic players. Nokia is no longer the favorite, only ranked at no.3. Not all Chinese love Apple’s iPhone, Samsung is the runner-up, phones made by the Korea electronic giant have gained popularity in Chinese market. The only four Chinese handset companies who gets the most attention are Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE. Xiaomi ranked at the highest no.5 spot, ahead of Sony Ericsson and Motorola …

Baidu, the largest Chinese language search engine in China, has provided a service known as Baidu Search Ranking. It provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest. Inside the phone category, a top billboard chart has listed the most popular keywords search on 50 handset companies. The ‘iPhone’ keyword has made Apple became the most-recognized handset brand in China. Over at the handset model category, ‘iPhone 4s’ also rank at no.1, surprisingly the not-yet-release iPhone 5 rank at no.4. Many Chinese seem to be searching the new generation iPhone everyday.

We are also quite surprise Xiaomi phone could ranked at no.5 spot, it shows us that the start-up enterprise, where it get started off by making aftermarket firmware which is based on the open-source Android operating system, now attracts considerable attentions in the cell phone industry. While rival manufacturer Meizu is not listed in the top 10, the company only ranked at no.11 for its brand awareness. All major companies will release their new handsets in the upcoming months, it will be interesting to see how is the ranking change during end of the year.

SOURCE: Baidu Search Ranking (Link1)(Link2)