There was no surprise on Tuesday when IDC released its smartphone market report for Q2 2013. As expected, Samsung dominated the top spot, followed by Apple with market shares of 35 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively.

However, a new development took place in the 3rd and 4th places as Chinese phonemaker Huawei overtook South Korean firm LG. Huawei now holds 5.1 per cent of the market share while LG, despite logging a larger slice of the smartphone pie, slipped to fourth place with 4.8 per cent share.

Analysts explain the faster rise of Huawei, despite the strong performance of LG, to strong uptake of the Ascend P6 and G610, especially in China where residents prefer local brands over foreign one such as Apple.

YouTube/Huawei Device

But outside South Asia, Huawei needs to improve its marketing efforts to come closer to the 13 per cent share of second-placer Apple.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne and Huawei CEO and founder Ren talk at a campus at Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen. October 16, 2013.

Woody Oh, senior analyst of Strategy Analytics, said, quoted by The Wall Street Journal, "Huawei will need to expand aggressively in the American and European markets if it wants to seriously challenge the big two of Samsung and Apple next year."

YouTube/etotalk cs