Google Play is expected to launch its China app store in March 2016, which will likely be a separate and independent version of Google Play.
Related: Does Google Play Stand A Chance in China?
Google will launch a Chinese version of the service. However, the new accounts will not link to the international version. Google Play supports Alipay instead of Paypal to cater to Chinese users.
The number of app downloads on Google Play was 100% more than that on Apple App Store in 2015 with about 40 percentage points increase compared to 2014 according to App Annie. Google Play gained more market share in 2015.
App users were more willing to spend money on apps in 2015. Although downloads of Google Play were far more than Apple App Store, revenues of Apple App Store were 75% higher than Google Play.
Users of iOS system seemed to spend more on apps. China’s market accounted for about 30% of Apple overall revenues in 2015. Google hopes to drive more paid service users through Google Play Chinese version.
Google recently released job postings on on LinkedIn to employ up to 60 people in Beijing and Shanghai. Launching a Google Play could extend the benefits for Google to Android based smart devices and games requiring Google services to play in China.
Smartphone vendor HTC is said to manufacture Google Nexus series of smartphones on behalf of Google in China and will launch one to support all telcos networks in the future.
China’s consumers are used to download free mobile apps from fixed app stores on smartphones or third-party app stores and 3.1 million smartphones have installed foreign applications .