China Mobile Internet Insights in H1 2015

October 20, 2015 By CIW Team

Despite the continuous weak growth and even decline in smartphone sales in China, major domestic mobile phone manufacturers still set a “big leap” of shipping target in H1 2015. Although foreign brands iPhone and Samsung still held a large market share, domestic brands as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi and TCL etc. all set their phone sales volume at 100 million units.

In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by total shipments volume of 15.9%, followed by Huawei (15.7%). Apple ranked third, followed by Samsung and Vivo.

China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, the three Chinese telecommunications companies accounted for 90% of the market.

4G network penetrated quickly into Chinese people’s life while users accessing to the internet through Wi-Fi accounted for 52%, mainly because of the high data charges of 4G network.

25% China mobile internet users on average opened less than 5 apps per day while over 60% would use less than 10 apps. Only 2.9% users would open more than 20 apps in one day. Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu still led China’s mobile internet market.

Among the top 20 mobile apps by total number of monthly average users, seven apps were from by Tencent. And among all the mobile apps in China in July 2015, WeChat and QQ ranked first with the monthly average users of 556.48 million and 424.28 million respectively.

WeChat and QQ were the social communication platforms with the highest penetration rate. Among the usage of the top 20 apps, users spent about 27% of the total apps usage time on WeChat and QQ. Search engine, video, and music player apps were also popular among mobile internet users.

Tencent held a strong position in the mobile social platform. Mobile internet users spent more time on WeChat compared with QQ; however among the post-00s, QQ was the major communication tool.

In the mobile video player market, Tencent, iQIYI and Youku led the market, with fierce competition and little gap of MAU (monthly active users) and total usage.

In the mobile music player market, Kugou music undoubtedly took the lead, followed by QQ Music and Kuwo Music.

Tencent News enjoyed a large share in China’s news apps market while Toutiao was in the process of fast penetration. Toutiao and Tencent News were quite close in total usage time. The daily usage of Toutiao was even twice that of Tencent News .

Offers from China online travel providers such as Ctrip and Qunar have extended to provide more on “things to do” in travel destinations. China online travel providers have also expanded to provide lifestyle offers such as food delivery, movie ticketing and car renting. In H1 2015, Ctrip and Qunar continued the growth momentum, which contributed to the tourism market of China.

Resulting from the convenience of online banking and online payment, mobile online banking apps developed quickly. China Construction Bank ranked first with monthly average usage of 2.32%.

China became the largest e-commerce market since 2014. About 53% users were women in 2015. Taobao held an unaltered position in the online e-commerce market, followed by JD and Vipshop.

In the mother care market, Beibei ranked first with an overwhelming advantage, whose monthly average usage was more the sum of other four apps.

Competition was fierce in the cross-border hopping market, and Red ranked first in H1 2015 with a market share of 0.19%.

Meituan still ranked top on the group-buying apps in H1 2015, followed by Dianping and Nuomi while Ele continued to compete and was expected to be competitive to Meituan in the monthly average usage.

Meituan and Ele dominate the food delivery market. Ele led the market in Beijing and Shanghai while Meituan held an obvious advantage in other cities. Beijing made up of nearly 10% of the total food delivery share.

Car calling market was basically shared by Didi, Kuaidi and Uber. Although Uber China made much effort in the localization of Uber, the number of daily average users was only one third that of Didi Cars/Kuaidi One.

WeChat payment has gradually been adopted by more users. Many apps supported payments by WeChat. Didi and Meituan were first two apps that used WeChat payment as the primary payment method.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015