Chinese cell phone makers took advantage of Nokia's slump and the popularity of the Android operating system for mobile phones to catch up with their overseas counterparts last year in the domestic market, the world's No. 1 phone market.

The domestic makers occupied six spots in the list of the top 10 handset brands in China and took a combined market share of 37.5 percent by the end of last year, close to the other four overseas brands' share of 41.5 percent, according to a latest report by Analysys International, a Beijing-based IT research firm, yesterday.

The market share of the domestic brands like Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE was only 20 percent at the end of 2010, compared with over 55 percent of the big four overseas brands - Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and LG, Analysys said.

"The change mainly came after Nokia's dominance disappeared and fueled by the rapidly growing Android, which gives phone makers a new equal and open platform to develop phones," Analysys said.