Nokia’s market share in China was 19.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with 23.5 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. estimates. Samsung Electronics Co., the No. 2 vendor, had an 8.9 percent share, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Gartner’s Egham, England-based unit.

Operators like China Mobile Ltd. and China Telecom Corp. are playing a bigger role and Nokia needed to “worry about market share” and make “aggressive changes,” Elop said on May 31. He had just spent a week in China to look at what changes were needed there to position for Windows Phone.

ZTE, Huawei Beijing-based China Mobile had 617 million customers at the end of June, making it the biggest mobile-phone operator by subscribers. In China, Nokia competes with local manufacturers including ZTE Corp. (000063), TCL Corp. (000100) and Huawei Technologies Co.

“There are dozens of local competitors making feature phones, and also manufacturers of Android devices,” Schroeder said. “The cheap Android phones are stepping on the toes of Nokia feature phones.”

China has been fertile ground for smaller manufacturers building handsets around chipsets from MediaTek Inc. (2454) and competing with Nokia on styling and new features such as dual- SIM slots that let users make calls on different networks. In the past quarter, Nokia started selling its first dual-SIM phones in India and Southeast Asia. The handsets are easier to use without rebooting than rival models, Elop said.

Torchbearer Apple increased its China revenue sixfold to about $3.8 billion in its third quarter as consumers bought iPhones at its stores to use on networks operated by China Mobile and China Unicom.

“I firmly believe that we’re just scratching the surface right now,” Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said July 20.