January 2, 2012 - Several Chinese handset manufacturers have recently formed an alliance to counter litigation brought by big international smartphone-manufacturing companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.
In 2011, China outperformed the U.S. in smartphone manufacturing, shipping 24 million units. Apple, Microsoft and Nokia reportedly all have plans to expand their market in China, and Nokia has already filed suit against several Chinese smartphone manufacturers.
However, this alliance - and the fact that Huawei (one Chinese manufacturer being pursued by Microsoft to take a patent license) already has 65,000 patents worldwide - mean that the Chinese market will likely be the scene of some major smartphone wars in the years to come.