A research firm has reported that Nokia and Motorola is currently dominating the relatively small market for smartphones in China.

China Mobile

CCID Consulting said that Nokia cornered more than 69 percent of about 7.5 million smartphones shipped in China in the third quarter of 2008.

Motorola meanwhile got 20 percent, while HTC and Samsung shared the small remainder of the market.

Chinese smartphone users naturally had Symbian as their preferred operating system.

Linux is at second place, thanks to Linux-powered handsets by Motorola, while at third spot is Windows Mobile.

Android faces a bright future in China. China Mobile, which has several hundreds of millions of subscribers, recently joined the Open Handset Alliance and has announced that it would release an Android-powered handset in the first half of 2009.