Beijing, Nov 28 (IANS): China's mobile phone shipments stood at 282 million units in the first ten months of the year, up 12 per cent year on year, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

In October, the country's mobile phone shipments surged 28.4 percent year on year to nearly 33.58 million units, said the CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

A total of 26 new models were released last month, up 4 per cent from a year earlier, the data showed.

The country's domestic brands continued to dominate mobile phone shipments last month. Their shipments topped 22.81 million units, making up 67.9 per cent of the total shipments, reports Xinhua news agency.

In the January-October period, shipments by domestic brands went up 9.2 percent year on year to reach 247 million units, according to the CAICT.

Meanwhile, shipments of 5G smartphones in China reached 167.5 million units in 2020, accounting for more than half of the total smartphone shipment throughout the year, according to global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

In the fourth quarter last year, China shipped 60.1 million 5G handsets, data from IDC showed.

Last year, the country had shipped a total of 325.7 million units of smartphones, down 11.2 per cent year on year.