A recently unveiled survey highlighted that Chinese brands dominated the growth of the world's smartphone market in 2016.

According to the latest research from Counterpoint Technology Market Research, while leading vendors such as Samsung and Apple witnessed an annual decline in growth, the three-percent year-on-year global shipments increase was mostly driven by four major Chinese brands -- Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and ZTE (including Nubia), that shipped more than 365 million units globally.

"Among the best shipments performers, Oppo and Vivo were the fastest growing brands as the brick and mortar stores for both the brands had seen rapidly established from tier-one to tier-four cities across the country," said the industry consulting company.

The survey also estimated that LTE will become a dominant technology for mass market adoption, with Gigabit LTE to start providing the foundation next year for premium high speed mobile broadband, before the 5G rollout takes over by 2022.

Let's take a look at the world's top 10 vendors by global shipment volumes in the past year:

No 10 Alcatel, 34.1 million units

The Alcatel logo is displayed at the Alcatel pavilion during day four of the Mobile World Congress at the Fira Gran Via complex in Barcelona, Spain on February 25, 2016. [Photo/VCG]