China is on course to become the world’s largest market for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets this month, knocking the US off the top spot.

Anaytics firm Flurry found that China and the US were roughly equal in terms of the installed base for active smart devices in January, with the US on 222 million and China on 221 million.

Using historical growth trends and the number of detected devices, Flurry projects that by the end of February, China will have 246 million devices compared to 230 million devices for the US.

Given the population difference of the two countries — 1.3 billion for China compared to 310 million for the US — it is unlikely that the US will retake its lead.

Only India, with a population of 1.2 billion, has the potential to overtake China. However, there are currently only 19 million smart devices in India, meaning this won’t take place in the short term.

China added 150 million new devices year-on-year compared to 55 million for the US. However, China’s year-on-year growth rate for January of 209 per cent was not enough to beat Colombia, Vietnam, Turkey, Ukraine and Egypt.

In January the US and China each had more than five times the active installed base than the UK, the third largest market, with 43 million active devices.

Flurry tracked 2.4 billion application sessions per day across more than 275,000 apps around the world, which it estimates measures activity for more than 90 per cent of the world’s smart devices.