Global smartphone AP suppliers will see their shipments to China grow only 13.5% on year and drop 3.1% on quarter in the first quarter of 2014. Shipments will total 91.8 million units in the first quarter, according to data from a recently published data service report from Digitimes Research.

　　The report explains that in China the first quarter is now transitioning into the slow season for the smartphone industry, as China's mobile communication industry moves from explosive growth to behaving more like a maturing industry. Moving forward, seasonality is expected to have more of an influence on China smartphone vendors' performance, Digitimes Research explained in the report.

　　Decreased orders from smartphone vendors should relatively impact chip suppliers' shipments in the quarter. The largest AP supplier MediaTek is seeing its shipments weakening and its LTE products so far have not been able to help cover its existing product lines, Digitimes Research noted.

　　The report, titled China Smartphone AP shipments is part of the newly launched quarterly data services from Digitimes Research.