The mobile market in China is huge but also a little confusing. Perhaps this solid report prepared by Professor Liu of Beijing University could be handy to help shed some light (thanks to @Klukoff for the tip!). The original document (in Chinese) can be found here, uploaded by Beijing University itself. But we took the liberty to digest and summarize some of the key points below. You can also see the embedded version of Prof. Liu’s report below:
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More folks are using their mobile phones to surf the internet in China. According CNNIC’s data, mobile internet users hit a whopping 388 million, compared to the desktop user count which is at 380 million.
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There are multiple ways whereby users can download mobile apps in China — through a third-party app store, bulletin board, or search. For iOS users, the legal way is to download (and pay) through the app store. Jailbreaking your iPhone is perhaps the more popular but illegal way of downloading apps.
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For Android, most development firms publish their apps on various stores and sites. Sure there is Google Play; but more importantly there are also third-party Android app stores too which serve as an important distribution channel for developers. Most Chinese developers choose to provide the ‘.apk’ download files, bypassing Google’s Play store anyway.
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There are more female than male mobile app users (52.2 vs 47.8 percent). And perhaps thanks to the availability of cheaper smartphones, there are also more users from the less educated sectors of society.
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Folks who use Baidu in China (who are the majority of web users), will search and downloads apps directly from the search results, thanks to Baidu’s box computing system. Search is still the largest source of app downloads, followed by users who head straight to a third-party app website for downloads. Visiting official app stores for downloads ranks third, which is pretty decent.
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Wandoujia (SnapPea in English) is the top third-party app store for Android users in China in terms of market share. iMobile, on the other hand, is the top mobile app and forum site in China.
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In 2012, Chinese users are more willing to pay for app content, especially digital content like e-books, games, music, and anti-virus apps. Though we know they aren’t willing to pay that much for e-books, just $0.50.
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For apps that have been downloaded, chat, web surfing, and games/entertainment apps are most frequently used. Maps and dictionary apps aren’t used as frequently.
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