Visitors walk past the Qualcomm stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in this file photo taken February 24, 2014.

Qualcomm Inc plans to sell its first smartphone chips tailored to China this year, as the US maker of chips for high-end phones adapts to a market where growth is increasingly driven by low-priced handsets.

Three chipsets unveiled in February will appear in Chinese handsets before anywhere else, David Tokunaga, a senior director in product management, told reporters at Taiwan\'s annual Computex trade fair.

"The second half of this year will see our first products on the market that are really China-focused," Tokunaga said.

Qualcomm is the world\'s No 1 smartphone chipmaker by revenue, according to Strategy Analytics, and the majority of its chips end up in high-priced phones such as Apple Inc\'s iPhone.

But revenue in the company\'s last reporting quarter grew at its slowest rate since 2010, as sales of expensive phones slowed in developed markets while low-priced models with comparable features drove growth in emerging markets.