Fight for the first bite (5)

In comparison, Samsung maintained the top position during the past quarter, while Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo trailed behind.

The remaining top five vendors in the third quarter are Shenzhen-based Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific, the maker of Coolpad smartphones, ZTE and Huawei, according to Canalys.

Further raising the spirit of Chinese brands, the US-based market research firm Gartner Inc predicted last week that Lenovo is poised to become the top smartphone vendor in the mainland in 2013.

While research group Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said on Tuesday that the iPhone 5 helped boost Apple's iOS platform back to the No.1 spot in the US market, beating down the huge Android army, it noted that the company's success in the US could not be repeated in other markets.

A random search for iPhone 5 on taobao.com, China's largest B2C online shopping platform, also showed that prices of the gadget on the Internet's huge grey market have already fallen to about 5,000 yuan compared to their peak of 10,000 yuan two months ago.

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