"If they want to surpass Samsung, they need to do three things first: set up a globalized sales network, solve the patent problem and focus on being the runner up to Samsung," Wang. "To date, no domestic maker has fulfilled the aforementioned."

Li Yi, Secretary General of the China Mobile Internet Industrial Association, said the smartphone market as a whole will shrink in coming years.

"Desktops used to be popular, but they were replaced by laptops. Several years later, tablets replaced laptops. Now, the tablet market is dwindling. Once-popular consumer electronics products will always be replaced after three to five years," Li said. "The smartphone will be no exception."

In several years, wearable devices will replace smartphones, and the smartphone market as a whole will shrink, said Li. "Realizing this, global heavyweights like Apple and Google are all transforming. Otherwise, they won't have any room for development in the future."

"Although domestic smartphone makers are prospering both at home and overseas, their primetime can only last for three to five years. As the technology further advances, smartphones may not exist in the future. Its functions will be integrated into a watch or a pair of glasses," Li said.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi Inc. was founded in April 2010 by Lei Jun and his friends in Beijing.

On August 16, 2011, Xiaomi's first smartphone debuted. In 2014, Xiaomi sold 61.12 million mobile phones in 2014, up 227 percent. It hopes to sell 100 million units of smartphones globally in 2015.

Xiaomi's product portfolio has been expanded to cover smartphones, tablets and televisions. Due to Xiaomi's success, Lei was named "China's Businessperson of the Year 2014" by Fortune China.

Lenovo

Founded in 1984 in Beijing, Lenovo Group Ltd. has become known to the world primarily as a leading PC maker.

Lenovo bought IBM's PC unit in 2005 for $1.25 billion and has become the world's largest seller of PCs since the third quarter of 2013 by overtaking Hewlett-Packard (HP).

In April 2010, Lenovo launched its first smartphone model. In the third quarter of 2014, Lenovo ranked No.4 in global smartphone shipment, accounting for 5.2 percent of the global market share.

After it bought Motorola mobile handset business from Google for $2.91 billion in October 2014, Lenovo claimed it ranked No.3 in smartphone shipment volume globally. By using Motorola as a springboard to North American and Latin American markets, it plans to sell more than 100 million smartphones in 2015.

Huawei

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., founded in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province in 1987, is a leading information and communications technology solutions provider. Its telecom network equipment, IT products and solutions, and smart devices are used in 170 countries and regions.

Huawei took over Ericsson AB to become the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world in 2013. It has invested heavily in smartphones and accounted for 9 percent of China's smartphone market in the third quarter of 2014.

(Compiled by Beijing Review)

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