India and Bangladesh will likely see their smartphone markets expand rapidly over the next few years amid China's sluggish growth, emerging as new lands of opportunity for global smartphone makers, a report said Thursday.

In terms of smartphone shipments, India's smartphone market is expected to grow at an annual average rate of 16 percent between 2017 and 2022, with the figure reaching 13.4 percent for Bangladesh, according to the report by industry tracker Strategy Analytics.

India is the world's second-most-populous nation with 1.27 billion people, and Bangladesh's population amounts to 160 million.

Their combined population exceeds China's 1.37 billion.

Smartphone makers are reportedly pinning their hopes on India and Bangladesh, which have large domestic markets and low smartphone penetration rates.

Over the cited period, the annual growth of China's smartphone market is projected to slow to 1.9 percent after expanding more than 50 percent annually over the past decade, as the market in the world's most populous country nears the saturation point.

The report also predicted Indonesia's smartphone market to grow at an annual average rate of 9.8 percent over the cited period.

Corresponding projections are 3.8 percent for South Korea, 3.2 percent for Japan, 3 percent for Thailand and 1.4 percent for Australia.

The Asia-Pacific region is the world's largest smartphone market that accounts for more than 50 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide.

The growth rate of the global smartphone market is expected to rise to up to 7 percent this year from 2 percent last year, as Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. plan to launch their new devices amid diversifying low-end and mid-range products, the report said. (Yonhap)