Smartphone-makers look overseas

China's mobile phone shipments declined by 12.3 percent in 2017, highlighting the mounting pressure on domestic smartphone players, which are looking to intensify their push to go global this year, analysts said on Thursday.

Companies shipped 491 million handsets last year, with the number for December standing at 42.6 million, plummeting by 32.5 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, an institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Jia Mo, an analyst at market research firm Canalys, said the Chinese smartphone market is hitting saturation point, which will prod big vendors to accelerate their global expansion plans, especially in countries such as India.