Webpower recently released China email marketing industry report, showing overall development and industrial application status quo. The report provided four EDM (email direct marketing) indexes for analysis.

According to the report, the overall EDM average delivery rate reached 94.07% in 2013, with 3.49% YoY growth. Average unique open rate increased by 14.83% yearly to 11.59%; average unique click & open rate increased by 1.18% yearly to 20.56%; average click & delivery rate was 2.38%, up 12.26% in 2013.

Chinese email marketing tended to be in a steadily rise in 2013. The performance in Q2 was quite remarkable, while the performance was rather stable in other quarters. From April to June was the busiest period of economic activities, so enterprises from all industries would start email marketing during that period.

According to iiMedia Research, the mobile sharing proportion of WeChat Friends, WeChat Moment and Sina Weibo was 25.6%, 23.4% and 19.2% respectively. The sharing proportion of these top 3 sharing platforms totaled over 60%. While foreign social sharing platform Facebook only took up 1.0%. iiMedia data suggested that WeChat had become the first choice of most Chinese social networking users. As WeChat was gradually upgrading and improving, it would keep leading other sharing platforms.

The data showed male users took up 72.9% of Kaixin users. More than 60% users of Tencent Weibo and Netease Weibo were male. However, the male users proportion of Facebook and VKontakte were only 34.9% and 45.5% respectively. Generally, men tended to be more willing to share than women on China social networking platforms, it was the opposite on foreign social networking.

According to iiMedia Research, app types varied in feature and demand, therefore their social sharing patterns were quite different. Social sharing platforms were used more commonly by following app types: book & reading, news, mobile social, e-commerce and photo.

Sharing proportion of game apps and life apps was 37.4% and 27.1% respectively. They accounted for 60% of total app sharing. Users seldomly shared contents like social, video and news.

As iiMedia data represented, most Chinese social sharing users were in coastal regions. Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were the top 3. For sharing behavior period, there were two peak periods at night: 19-21 o’clock and midnight. Female shared more during daytime and evening, while male were active at late night.

Tencent recently released unaudited comprehensive performance of Q4 by December 31, and audited 2013 annual performance. In Q4, Tencent gross revenue reached 16.97 billion Yuan (USD 2.783 billion), with a 9% QoQ growth and a 40% YoY growth.

2013 Annual Performance Abstract:

• Gross revenue reached 60.437 billion Yuan (USD 9.913 billion), up 38% from a year earlier.
• Operating profit was 19.194 billion Yuan (USD 3.148 billion), increasing by 24% from a year earlier. The operating margins fell from 35% to 32%.
• Non-GAAP operating profit rose 22% to 20.768 billion Yuan (USD 3.406 billion); the non-GAAP fell from 39% to 34%.
• Profit attributable to shareholders was 15.502 billion Yuan (USD 2.543 billion), with a 22% YoY growth.
• Non-GAAP profit attributable to shareholders was 17.063 billion Yuan (USD 2.799 billion), up 19% from a year earlier.
• Basic earning per share reached 8.464 Yuan and diluted earning per share was 8.298 Yuan.

2013 Q4 Performance Abstract:

• Gross revenue reached 16.970 billion Yuan (USD 2.783 billion), with a 9% QoQ growth and a 40% YoY growth.
• Operating profit was 4.751 billion Yuan (USD 779 million), increasing by 24% compared to last year, but fell 1% compared to last month; the operating margins fell from 31% last quarter to 28%.
• Non-GAAP operating profit was 5.325 billion Yuan (USD 873 million), on par with Q3,  increasing 23% from a year earlier ; the non-GAAP fell from 34% to 31%.
• Profit attributable to shareholders was 3.911 billion Yuan (USD 641 million), 1% higher than Q3 and 13% higher than a year earlier.
• Non-GAAP profit attributable to shareholders was 4.498 billion Yuan (USD 738 million), up 3% from Q3 and 11% from a year earlier.
• Basic earning per share reached 2.125 Yuan and diluted earning per share was 2.092 Yuan.

The revenue from value-added service rose 3% from last quarter to 11.932 billion Yuan (USD 1.921 billion), accounted for 70.3% of Q4 revenue.

Online advertising revenue increased 8% to 1.497 billion Yuan (USD 241 million), taking up 8.8% of Q4 revenue. The revenue of online video advertising and social network advertising grew, offsetting the influence of transferring Tencent online searching business to Sogou.

The revenue of e-commerce increased by 41% from last quarter to 3.324 billion Yuan (USD 535 million), taking up 19.6% of Q4 revenue. The growth was mostly caused by seasonal promotion activities.

Main Platforms Data:

• The monthly active IM accounts hit 808 million, down 1% from Q3 but up 1% from Q4 2012.
• Most concurrent IM accounts reached 180 million, with a 1% QoQ growth and a 2% YoY growth.
• Overall (domestic and abroad) WeChat monthly active accounts reached 355 million, 6% higher than last quarter and 121% higher than 2012.
• Qzone monthly active accounts increased to 625 million, up 0.3% from Q3 and 4% from Q4 2012.
• Most concurrent accounts of QQ Game platform reached 8.5 million, increasing by 4% from Q3 and decreasing 3% from 2012.
• Paid accounts of value-added service reached 88.6 million, on par with last quarter, but 15% lower than last year.

Main Business

QQ and Qzone maintained a leading position in China communication and social network. The number of user account was growing at a slower pace as user traffic was transferring from PC to mobile terminals. For QQ, monthly active accounts increased slightly by 1% to 808 million, and most concurrent accounts rose 2% to 180 million at the end of 2013. In 2013, Tencent significantly enlarged mobile QQ user group by improving user experience and enriched service such as game center. By the end of 2013, active QQ intelligent terminals accounts reached 426 million with a 74% YoY growth. For Qzone, monthly active accounts increased by 4% to 625 million. The activity and participation of mobile Qzone users both increased in 2013: monthly active Qzone intelligent terminal accounts increased by 63% to 416 million, and the number of pictures uploaded from mobile Qzone also increased.

Combined monthly active accounts of Weixin (WeChat domestic version) and WeChat reached 355 million by the end of 2013. WeChat expanded rapidly in China, and the user participation also rose in 2013. With new service such as game center, public accounts and WeChat payment, and the acceptance of Moment, WeChat was changing from a simple communication service to an integrated platform.

Tencent online advertising business kept expanding with the growth of Tencent media platform and social platform. The revenue of brand display advertising and performance display advertising both increased in 2013. For search advertising, the revenue fell because Tencent transferred its searching business to Sogou. Tencent believed Sogou’s merging with Soso would help improve its share of PC and mobile searching market.

The transaction volume and revenue of Tencent proprietary e-commerce business grew strongly. It was benefited from geographic coverage expansion, richness of goods and improving e-commerce infrastructure. As Tencent teamed up with Jingdong, the business, staff and asset of Tencent’s B2C platform (QQ Wanggou) and C2C platform (Paipai) and some of Yixun’s equity was transferred to Jingdong, while Jingdong got a call option on remaining equity of Yixun. Tencent and Jingdong would cooperate in online payment service and other fields.

China digital advertising market kept increasing fast in 2013. The multi-screen media environment was much more common in Chinese netizen’s life, and the cross-screen integration became the focus point for advertisers.

According to iResearch online advertiser monitoring tools iAdTracker, following are trend and analysis of some specific video, weibo and news media (as “the three media” below) advertising spending on PC and mobile APP. This will help you understand the industry pattern and trend about multi-screen investment.

Data showed that from January to November in 2013, the brand online advertising revenue of the three media on PC client reached 13.74 billion Yuan (USD 2.23 billion).  The revenue rose 50.9% from January to November. The advertising spending on mobile APP was relatively limited compared to the spending on PC, but its growth rate was much higher than PC’s. The average QoQ growth rate of spending on APP reached 25.1%; the growth was 72.8% in July with the help of some leading brands.

According to the industry statistics by iAdTracker, toiletry advertising (estimation) spending took up 62.6% of the three media APP advertising market, followed by food & beverage. Traditional popular industries on PC client such as transportation, internet service and financial service had small market shares, representing a significant difference between two screen markets. The top 3 advertising industry on PC are: transportation with 19.8%, food & beverage with 16.6% and internet service with 15.0%

For advertisers on mobile APP, about half of the top 10 were in the toiletry industry. Marubi ranked the first, showing a mature strategy on mobile. High-end skin care brands like Chanel, Estee Lauder also performed well.

Mobile internet brought new marketing points for consumption goods market. As daily chemicals retail market has a demand for consumer communication and in-time product information, this market seems to walk ahead. The mobile APPs of the three media (video, weibo and news) has very social and sticky users, which matches the potential consumer characters of this industry. APP advertising uses fragmentary time to push eye-catching and caring  discount information or brand story, or even other services. This may be a bright spot in interactive advertising market.

ZDC recently released a brand awareness analysis report of China smartphone market in February, 2014. The number of competitive manufacturers in China smartphone market remained unchanged in February, but the number of mobile phones reduced by over 20 compared to last month. For new mobile device, although many manufacturers launched new devices in MWC 2014, these mobile devices have not come to the market yet. There were few new arrivals in the market, and Vivo X3S became the new focus.

Brand Awareness

In terms of brand awareness, Samsung was still running ahead with over 20% awareness, followed by Apple with 12.3%. In February, Huawei ranked No.3 with 8.5% awareness. There were large gaps among top 3 brands, while No.3 to No.5 had closer awareness. Nokia hold a 0.2 points lead over Coolpad.

In the top 15 list, four brands moved up while three fell down. Nokia and Coolpad rose one place to No.4 and No.5 respectively. Lenovo dropped from 4 to 6. HTC surpassed Sony Mobile in February, and Meizu swapped place with Vivo.

Product Awareness

For product awareness, Apple iPhone 5S topped with 4.6% awareness. Samsung GALAXY Note 3 and Meizu MX3 followed, but not so closely. The top 15 devices were from Apple, Samsung, Meizu, Nokia, Huawei, Coolpad, HTC, LG, Lenovo and OPPO. Among them, Apple and Samsung both had three models on the list.  For configuration parameters, 11 out of 15 were using Android OS; 11 models had screen size larger than 5 inch; 8 models had quad-core CPU.

In February, devices in the 1000-2000 Yuan (USD 162 to 324) price range won most awareness, rising 3.3 points to 30.8%. The awareness of devices below 1000 Yuan (USD 162) and above 4000 Yuan (USD 649) fell slightly compared to last month. In other price range, the awareness was about the same as last month.

For operating system, Android still definitely occupied the mainstream with 79.4% awareness. Compared to last moth, Android awareness fell slightly to below 80% again. Apple iOS had 12.3% awareness while Windows Phone had 7.3%, a little higher than January.

Quad-core products were most popular in February; the awareness fell 0.3% to 55.2%. The awareness of dual-core products also decreased slightly (1.1 points), but remained over 30%. Eight-core/two quad-core products were getting more attention, increasing 2 points to 10.7% awareness.

According to ZDC, 4.6-5 inch screen size was the mainstream in February, with 32.7% awareness. Smartphones with over 5 inch screen had 31.4% awareness, representing a possibility of surpassing 4.6-5.0 inch’s. View from the trend, the awareness of 4.6-5.0 inch screen size fell slightly while the 5.0 inch’s kept rising.

As front camera entered the era of 10 megapixel, consumers’ demand of main camera continually increased. In February, smartphones with 8/8.7 megapixel camera were still the focus, but the awareness decreased 1.5 points to 42%. In contrast, the awareness of above 10 megapixel camera kept increasing to 36.5%.

For battery capacity, devices with 2000-3000 mAh battery had the highest awareness, 49.5%, getting close to half. The awareness of above 3000 mAh battery also increased to 19.9%, almost reached 20%. At the same time the awareness of below 2000 mAh battery kept falling.

Case Study: HTC

According to ZDC, HTC ranked No.7 with 4.5% awareness, moving up one place with 0.3% growth. This was a good sign for declining HTC. Recently HTC launched new Desire 8 series which caught people’s eye. This might be a nice start in 2014 for HTC to turn things around.

HTC has 42 models on the market now. Among them, there are 16 smartphones in 1000-2000 Yuan (USD 162 to 324) price range; 10 smartphones were under 1000 Yuan. Only 5 devices were in 2001-3000 (USD 324 to 487) price range, however these 5 devices brought 45.5% awareness for HTC. ZDC suggested that HTC should focus on middle-end and high-end smartphones.

In short, new devices of smartphone giants haven’t come to market yet, so China smartphone market was quiet in February. Nevertheless, it might be the quiet before the dawn: the competition was predicted to intensify next month, and the awareness pattern will change again.

According to a Chinese retailer power ranking report released by Kantar Retail, a global retail insight and consulting business, China retail market has been growing rapidly attributes to the booming economy and the increasing demand for consumption goods.

Based on the power ranking of retailer in 2013, Wal-Mart was still the leader, followed by growing RT-Mart. They were both regarded to have clear strategy and deep understanding of consumers. Domestic retailers had a solid performance in 2013, CRE ranked the 3rd, representing manufacturers’ approval of its consumer-centered business method and willingness of mutual growth. Yonghui’s main advantage is a good understanding of local markets, which made it the top 7 this year. At the same time, 7-Eleven dropped out of top 10.

The power of RT-Mart was increasing day by day, coming up with Wal-Mart. Among these retailers with considerable profit, RT-Mart’s performance was excellent. RT-Mart was highly praised for its branding and clear strategy, but Wal-Mart stayed ahead with its rank of business fundamentals rising.

Chinese retailers, CRE and Yonghui were doing fine in 2013. CRE was busy opening new stores, doing acquisition and expanding last year (2012), and kept going this year (2013). Yonghui became one of the top 10 retailers from a regional star.

Moreover, following retailers were on the list for their excellence in innovation, professional team and offering shopping experience that improved consumer loyalty.

According to report, some manufacturers commented that JD.com (Jingdong) was the most creative e-commerce platform with professional team and management. Zhongbai Group owned high loyalty of consumers, and Zhongbai was always ready to cooperate with manufacturers.

Baidu was committed to improving internet environment. To provide better search result, Baidu has updated its algorithm for 7 times in 2013.

• 2013-2 Baidu launched a algorithm named Scindapsus Aureus to avoid hyperlink cheating. About 2 billion cheating pages were influenced, including intermediary, sellers and buyers of hyperlink.
• 2013-5 Baidu algorithm updated to Pomegranate, to decrease poor pages with spam. About 2.7 billion low quality pages were influenced. These websites had lots of poor pop-up advertisement, or content covered by advertisement.
• 2013-5 Algorithm were updated to improving the rank of original content. The websites which collected content from other sites used to be the top, so original content websites were hard to get profit. After updating, 5.2 billion pages including collection websites and false original websites were hit.
• 2013-7 Baidu launched Scindapsus Aureus Algorithm 2.0 to reduce advertorial promotion. The update influenced 1.6 billion news page.
• 2013-7 New algorithm managed to punish the websites selling second-level domains and directories. 1.2 billion pages were influenced.
• 2013-9 Baidu update algorithm to deal with batch produced results of static research, influencing 0.8 billion pages.
• 2013-12 The Pomegranate algorithm 2.0 were launched to improve the quality of search result. About 3.8 billion pages were influenced by the new algorithm.

Before March 8 in 2014, the International Women’s Day, Qunar conducted an online survey of female travel enthusiasts. Post-80s accounted for over 56% of respondents. In terms of travel frequency, 41% of respondent chose 1-2 times inbound travel and 1-2 times outbound travel; about 15% said they “quite enjoy traveling”, and would travel for 3-5 times inbound, more than 1 time outbound. Although it’s difficult to take a leave, about 30% of respondents would choose travel time of over 8 days, which was enough for long term inbound travel or outbound travel.

When people talk about women, they always talk about love. For the question “Where do you want to ‘elope’ to with your man?”, Maldives was the most favorite “eloping” destination with 37% of the vote. About 34% of women would “go to Europe for ancient castle and church, travel as further as we can”. Some respondents said romantic places such as Aegean Sea of Greece and Venice are their “eloping destination”.

Women’s passion about island travel was apparent in this survey. When it comes to choosing islands for travel destination, visa-free/visa-on-arrival islands such as Maldives and Bali got 52% of the vote, becoming the favorite islands of women. “Niche” islands like Fiji, Mauritius and Seychelles became the new darling with 39% vote.

Who makes the route decision and who pays the bill during travel? As the survey showed, about half women chose “I am a woman, I decide and pay”, and 27% voted for “Men and women discuss to make the decision and men pay the bill”. Only 11% chose “Women decide, men pay”.

Travel alone is always associated with emotions like relax, romance and healing. Among all respondents, 23% would go to “seaside cities such as Sanya” for solo travel. Moreover, Tibet and Lijiang were in the top 3 of “favorite destination for solo travel” list. Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and Korea were also the chosen ones.

As for travel types, self-guided travel was the favorite travel type of 41% women. This was a result of higher education and income level of female tourists and the influence of new Tourism Law. Only 5% of respondents voted for “package tour (pure fun)”. Furthermore, “semi-free tour” with guided route and 1-2 days free time was also favored, ranking the second with 39%.

Different from effeminate impression of women, most (over 70%) women would accept “manly” route. More tomboys now! About 37% of respondent chose “mountain climbing/cycling/hiking”, while 31% would “go Africa for watching animal migration”, which was considered the men’s favorite.

It’s women’s nature to go shopping. Where do you want to go with your close girlfriends? 41% said Japan or Korea, cause they could buy cosmetics there with friends. And 28% chose the holy land of shopping, Hongkong.

For travel companions, 62% of women would travel with friends, families and colleagues, while less than 45% of them chose to travel with their lovers.

And here is the last and funnest question: which constellation do you dislike to travel with? About two out of ten women chose Taurus, who was considered as stingy, calculating and “crazy about AA”. Besides, “always in the room” Pisces, “no reason why” Virgo, “easy to get angry” Aries and “quite aggressive” Capricorns were on the second to five places on the list.

The price war of ticket and hotel booking is eroding the profit of OTAs (online travel agents) in China. The growing outbound travel market has become their new battlefield.

According to National Business Daily, American hotel booking website Hotels.com announced a new Chinese website name called “Hao Ding Wang” on March 5 in 2014, focusing on outbound travel hotel booking. Their Chinese website and mobile app had launched a new booking page.

China became the world’s biggest source of tourist in 2011. According to UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization), China outbound traveler was estimated to break 100 million in 2014. The rapid developing outbound travel market represents the growing demand of outbound travel service. It creates new opportunities for OTAs at home and abroad.

Last year, Elong launched China’s first international hotel booking app, followed by Ctrip, Qunar and Qyer.

Ctrip cooperated with famous international hotel suppliers such as Booking.com and Agoda, to offer the best price options on its website. Qunar announced working with its competitor Ctrip. Qunar would do SEM (search engine marketing) on Qunar platform for Ctrip’s business information including hotel, air ticket and vacation travel. Recently Ctrip said there would be further cooperation with Qunar. Alibaba also invested more than 10 million dollar on Qyer for outbound travel business. At present, the relationship between OTAs is co-competition.

Zheng Rongfeng, the head of Aiyou.me said, “The booming China outbound travel market caught the eye of domestic and foreign OTAs, entrepreneurs and investors. Hotels.com is not the first one launching Chinese website; HRS has done this before and even launched an AR (augmented reality) booking App. But these foreign agents have been faced with the problem of adaption. They failed to provide services suited Chinese consumers, especially the service of phone call consulting and online payment.”

So domestic OTAs started to cooperate with foreign OTAs or large international hotel groups, represented by Ctrip’s cooperation with Booking.com. However, the efficiency of such cooperation still needs to improve.

Wei Changren, CEO of Ctcnn.com believed that outbound traveler would demand more personalized service of international hotel booking, as self-tour became popular. He said the cost of signing a contract with an international hotel was quite high, so most domestic OTAs chose to cooperate with international OTAs. The different ability and standard of domestic OTAs led to varying competitiveness.

Industry insiders said although foreign OTAs intensified the competition, they also brought opportunities of learning for domestic OTAs. “After several years of exploration in China market, domestic OTA giants have the advantage of better local service. They know about Chinese travelers, and they have more convenient payment channels. Ultimately, domestic OTAs will own more market share, persuading foreign OTAs to work with them.” said Zhen Rongfeng.

Baidu has released top search terms report by December 2013, now another report showed the search contents rank list. In 2013, the top 5 most-searched contents were film & TV, commodity supply & demand, education, game and travel, according to a report released by Baidu. The demand for education, travel, film & TV increased significantly in 2013. Baidu suggested webmasters paid attention to these field.

Education mainly refers to the demand for education resources, including course ware, course recommendation, professional examinations information, training institution and so on. Webmasters may integrate information about professional examinations to provide one-stop service for users. In terms of course ware and recommendation, websites could segment users according to their vocation and demand, then provide them with specific information.

The demand for travel included the source of destination recommendation, tickets booking, hotel reservation and travel note. Different user groups varied in characteristic, interest and demand. There are noteworthy differences for webmasters.

Film & TV resources included online video, video download, film review, variety shows, micro film and so on. The resources can be deeply integrated by relationship between films and actors. The content construction of information about film & TV is also important for webmasters.

Why China B2B market increased  in 2013?

From a macro point of view: Firstly, the government’s encouragement and financial support secured a healthy development of B2B e-commerce. Secondly, although the international economy was in recovery, its influence was weaker than increasing domestic trade which favor B2B market. Lastly, the explosion of long tail market was coming and hitting B2B market.

From a micro point of view: More B2B enterprises used internet for marketing to expand influence. The mature of B2B business model and the demand of deepening service promoted the development and diversification of B2B enterprises. And the e-commerce safety certification system was improving, giving the market a confidence in B2B enterprises.

In 2013, enterprises were more creative. New business models, including operating model, profit model and service model,  kept springing up and maturing. EnfoDesk believed that the whole market would maintain a stable growth as B2B vertical service deepens and operating model diversifies.

Alibaba, Global Sources and HC360 ranked Top 3 of China B2B enterprises with market share of 46.4%, 8.2% and 4.4% respectively, according to EnfoDesk. The market pattern was quite steady in 2013; the market share of 9 core B2B enterprises totaled 70.3%.

EnfoDesk said that the market share of comprehensive e-commerce platforms would decrease while B2B would focus more on difference between industries.

Baidu recently released 2014 China Website Development Report. In this report, Baidu revealed some facts about mobile search.

Mobile search brought large revenue for Baidu. What did people search on mobile in 2013? Literal content was still in demand, for being convenient and costing little traffic. This might be a good news for webmasters of small and medium size websites. 

The demand for high quality reading source, life service, tool service and online inquiries remained strong. And the demand for life service, tool &  inquiries, health and education increased in 2013; however China websites were lack of high quality source in these field.

Most mobile websites were not spider-friendly. In other words, the search engine optimization of mobile websites was low. Non-standard page and no mobile redirect for Baidu mobile UA (user agent) were the main reasons why spider failed to grab mobile web pages. These two reasons accounted for over 70% of ineffective grab. Baidu suggested mobile websites should use separate domain names. Baidu also encouraged webmasters to use Html 5.

According to Mobile Industry Statistic Report in 2013 released by Tencent, there would be more users choosing Android device in the coming year. As for now, Android devices with large screen and high definition video were becoming the mainstream of the increasing Android market. For Apple, the newest iOS7  spread rapidly among “iFans” (fans of Apple products). At the same time, iOS7 reduced the jailbreak rate of iOS, representing a future of legitimate game.

The report shows that in China mobile device market, the share of Android was 73.3% and iOS accounted for 24.7%. Among all Google Android devices, more than 70% devices ran Android 4.0 or latter versions. The former mainstream Gingerbread (Andorid 2.3) which had about half market share one year ago fell to 15% now and kept decreasing. As Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 and 4.2) gained growing share on Android devices, there would be more low-end devices running 4.0 or above versions.

Among iOS devices, most iOS5 and iOS6 users chose to upgrade when iOS7 released. The golden iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C performed quite good in mobile market, so Apple and China Mobile signed a cooperation agreement. Benefited from the cooperation with mobile operator, iOS7 would gain higher penetration in the future. By December 2013, the newest version iOS 7.0.4 had accounted for over 40% of market.

Meanwhile, the monopoly status of Android was strengthened, encroaching iOS market share bit by bit. Every time one Android user turned to iOS, 5 iOS users would turn to Android.

As more large screen Android devices came out in the market, many Apple fans left iOS for Android. The statistic showed that users went after large screen mobile phones for watching video, as 5-inch devices became popular. It was said that Apple also intend to launch 4.8 inch iPhone 6 this year.

Samsung was still the leader of China Android market with about 30% market share, according to report. Domestic mobile brands such as Xiaomi (12%), Huawei (7%), Lenovo (6.5%), Vivo (6%), OPPO (4%), Shanzhai Phones (China pirated brands, 4%) and Coolpad(4%) also performed well. The market share of domestic Android devices totaled 45%. As domestic smartphones become popular, their price advantage  would attract more users.

At present, 5-inch HD screen device was the majority in Android market. However, from the view of whole market, the leader was still low resolution devices. High-end Android devices with HD (1920*1080) screen, which was the primary resolution of 5-inch screen, rose to the top 5.

In terms of jailbreak, the jailbreak rate of iOS7 was far below iOS5 (61%) and iOS6 (28%), less than 5%. The monthly jailbreak rate kept decrease since iOS7 launched. Analysis suggested that jailbreak would be the less popular due to distribution channel improvement and operating system upgrading.

In Q4, Tmall, Jingdong and Tencent B2C remained Top 3 on the list. Matthew Effect was more obvious in the market: the market share of Tmall, Jingdong and Tencent all increased slightly to 49.7%, 19.0% and 7.0% respectively. Many e-commerce giants broke their order record on Double 11, due to the large traffic from Double 11 promotion. EnfoDesk suggested that large B2C enterprises with abundant capital had advantage in traffic acquisition and mobile entry, enlarging the gap between large and small B2C enterprises. To compete, small and medium B2C must cooperate with large B2C and improve their profession as well.

Jingdong ranked the first with market share of 41.3%, followed by Suning with 10.0% and Amazon.cn with 5.8%. In terms of enterprises performance, the “flash sale” mode of Vip.com (former Vipshop) was copied by many enterprises, such as Dangdang, Tencent B2C and Jingdong. EnfoDesk regarded “flash sale” as a possible mode for large e-commerce platform to do shoes&clothing business, and a good solve to the high inventory problem of China clothing market.This is the reason why “flash sale” mode was widely copied. The core of this mode was to get authorization from brand suppliers, rather than technique. In the short run, large B2C managed to copy the “form” of “flash sale”, but it is hard to success without brand authorization and superior suppliers.

EnfoDesk found the driving force of online retail GMV was mostly the sale promotion. Especially since large promotions launched, such as Tmall Double 11 in 2011 and “price war between online retailers” in 2012, China online retail market experienced a new stage of  rapid development. Furthermore, traditional industry began trying e-commerce; online retailing and trading were gradually accepted, boosting the development of online retailer market.

In 2013, Tmall remained on the top with 49.08% market share. It benefited largely from the consumer and commerce resources that Alibaba accumulated over years, giving Tmall an advantage of goods richness and brand strength. Also, Double 11 quickly enlarged the market and enhanced the influence of Tmall.

Jingdong followed Tmall with 18.16% in 2013. With perfect service and rapid delivery, Jingdong won many customers. In 2013, Jingdong expanded its business and enriched its goods variety, to seize a large market share.

Tencent B2C (including QQ wanggou and Yixun) accounted for 5.68% of the market. Although Tencent had huge traffic resource, its conversion rate was quite low. In 2013 Tencent integrated its B2C business, optimized merchant resource and eliminated overlapping business to achieve a higher resource utilization.

In 2013, Suning took 4.30% of the market with its brand awareness, offline supply chain and price advantage. Moreover, the acquisition of PPTV expanded its traffic source, providing a foundation to secure the market share and customers.

Amazon performed well in global market except in China. Amazon.cn only had 2.72% of market in 2013, as a consequence of poor localization capability. However, there were still many loyal customers appreciating its price, richness, technology and delivery advantages.

EnfoDesk statistic showed China mobile shopping market hit 157.04 billion Yuan (USD 25.54 billion) in 2013, up 161.5% YoY. The whole market was in a rapid developing period.

There were three major driving forces of mobile shopping market. Firstly, as online retailing acceptance was gradually increasing, it was easy for online retail to shift to mobile terminal. Secondly, many e-commerce giants focused on mobile shopping last year, their promotion activity boosted the development of mobile shopping. Thirdly, the mature of other mobile application such as mobile game also helped developing mobile payment habit, thus mobile shopping became popular.

The competition of mobile shopping market was basically the same as web shopping. EnfoDesk suggested that in the field of shopping, there were back-end supply chain competition besides front-end product competition. Although the mobile-only enterprises could firstly enter the unnoticed market in 3rd or 4th tier cities, they faced high cost structure due to the absence of supply chain and brand strength. In 2013, mobile-only e-commerce excluding MMB (maimaibao) all lost competitiveness. In terms of market share, Taobao Mobile accounted for 81.45% of market by taking advantage of Alipay, followed by Jingdong Mobile, MMB, Suning Mobile and Amazon Mobile.

As the report published by Ctrip showed, China tourists had strong willingness to travel in 2014. Over 99% of respondents would go traveling, and about half (51%) of them planned to travel 3 times and more. More tourists wished to travel more than once, compared with last year.

When will tourists choose to go for a trip this year? The inquiry found that paid leave and off-peak travel became mainstream in 2014, chosen by more than 80% of tourists, with a significant increase compared to 2013. But travel during the Spring Festival, the National Day or minor holidays was still a hot choice.

In respect of travel budget, 95% of tourists chose to increase or remained the same with last year. In terms of annual travel budget per person, about third of tourists planned to spend more than 10,000 yuan, and 1% of tourists had a budget of over 50,000 yuan.

What is the most important influencing factor of travel willingness? It’s the lack of vacation. Over 88% of the respondents chose “Time / holiday” as the vital factor. Next is the economic factor (income), chosen by half of the respondents, followed by “Travel security issue”.

The most influencing consumption factor of travel spending was housing (the cost of purchase and rent house), chosen by 56% polled. Other factors also included transportation (39%), social entertainment (28%), daily necessities (23%) and so on.

For the type of travel, domestic tourists chose self-guided tour mostly. Self-guided tour through travel agencies accounted for 42%, and 39% of tourists would choose totally self-guided tour. Only 19% of tourists preferred package tour according to the report.

In terms of transportation, the polled tourists would use combinations of different means, among which airplane, train and driving were three major choices. Other means including bus, cruise, bicycle and walking were also chosen.

In what way do the tourists make reservations and arrangement? The travel websites were the most used channel for information and reservation. 93% of participants said they would reserve online. The proportion of mobile client used increased tenfold to 39%, compared with last year.

What is the tourists’ preferred types of travel products? It’s found that tourists would choose multiple types of travel products, among which the top three are self-guided tour (74%), hotel (68%) and air ticket (62%). Car rental got 7% voted as a newly-developing business in recent years.

Among the planned travel destinations, Sanya, Lijiang and Jiuzhaigou were top three for inbound travel, while Thailand exceed Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan to become the hottest spot for outbound travel.

Most tourists thought positively of the change caused by Tourism Law. 67% of them chose “The itineraries are more normative”, followed by “No forced shopping, the overall cost of package tour is lower” and “The tour guides are more professional”. Also some participants opined that the law influenced little on self-guided tour.

For shopping item and items at own expense, three-in-ten chose “No need” and six-in-ten chose “It depends”; only 10% chose “Need”. Some respondents said, “There can be these items but the agency should make it clear, and no forced or implicit consumption.” and “We just don’t want optional items which are much more expensive than self-guided, and items like fooling, rip-off, high-priced shopping.”

GMV of China E-commerce increased 21.3% last year to 9.9 trillion yuan (USD 1.63 trillion), according to iResearch. The growth was expected to slow down in coming years, and the e-commerce market will reach 21.6 trillion yuan (USD 3.53 trillion) in 2017.

As the data showed, the GMV of online shopping was estimated to account for 7.8% of the total retail sales of  social consumer goods in 2013, with a growth of 1.6 percentage point.

In terms of the structure of e-commerce market in 2013, small and medium-size enterprises'(SME) B2B accounted for 51.7%, and B2B of enterprises above designated size took up 26.2%; the proportion of B2B summed up to 77.9%. The market share of online shopping, online travel and O2O was 18.6%, 2.3% and 1.2%, respectively.

According to iResearch, the domestic and foreign trade environment would improve after 2013. In the next 3 to 4 years, SME’s B2B will expand in fields such as platform transaction, value-added service and big data of platform, and the overall B2B market would increase steady. The market share of online shopping was higher than last year. Although online travel took low proportion, it kept over 30% growth rate driven by the developing segments like air ticket and hotel booking.

Among the segments of China e-commerce market, SME’s B2B was still the largest part; the GMV of SEM’s B2B was predicted to hit 12.4 trillion yuan (USD 2.03 trillion) in 2017, with compound growth rate of 25%. Moreover, O2O and mobile shopping would be the fastest developing segments in the future.

In respect of mobile shopping, the traditional e-commerce giants were focusing on developing user habit of mobile client. As the network coverage system maturing, more smartphone and tablet users started to utilize fragmentary time, and mobile shopping was a good option for filling time. Meanwhile the growth of online shopping on PC slowed down, making mobile market the new growth point. It motivated e-commerce enterprises to seize the mobile shopping market.

For O2O, the O2O market of local service was the early starter in traditional industry and had made some development. O2O of catering and ticket service began to take shape. Reverse O2O (offline to online) service such as QR code and sound wave payment were just emerging, however, as the technology matures, the market may exceed 100 billion in the future.

Do You still remember the “nickname bottle” that Coca Cola launched last summer? Such an impressive case was not so long ago, now Coca Cola has shifted its focus from bottle to cap, joining up with WeChat. 

Caps are beverage manufacturers’ favorite widget for doing promotion, other than bottles. Such as the most popular “one more bottle” printed on caps in previous years, used to be a common promotion way for many manufacturers. As consumers get used to marketing strategies like “free taste”, “special sale” and “different bottle packaging”, beverage manufacturers are forced to search for new strategies.

Coca Cola tried some creative marketing activities for many years in China. They set up ICOKE platform in 2005, combining traditional marketing with internet platform. By holding iCoke events and communicating with young consumers, Coca Cola successfully built an online community and strengthened their brand awareness.

In the past year, Coca Cola launched a brand new packaging specially for Chinese young consumers. They printed dozens of internet nicknames on the bottle packaging, including popular nicknames such as “Chi huo” (meaning foodie), “Xiao qing xin” (people like indie pop) and “Bai fu mei” (white rich beautiful woman). By carrying out various marketing tactics, the nickname bottle won much attention and became a distinguishing brand marketing case in 2013.

Coca Cola, in cooperation with WeChat, launched a promotion activity named “3PM drink and win Coca Cola” on March 3 in 2014. The activity was jointly organized by Coca Cola, WeChat and Yixun. For getting the chance of “seckilling”, consumers just need to join the Coca Cola Interactive Platform on WeChat, and input the Pincode on the cap. Coca Cola prepared 990 million Coca Cola, Sprite and Fanta with WeChat logo printed on the bottle for the activity. A special 15-second advertisement was on TV since March 3 and the creative information about the activity was also spread on social media.

It was the first time that Coca Cola tried to do exchange promotion on mobile; and WeChat created a new channel to interact and promote on mobile. The activity provided a true sense of retaining consumer relationship management, and an excellent marketing opportunity. Here are some noteworthy points of this cooperation:

• Traditional beverage giant initiated a cooperation with WeChat, trying new O2O interaction mode. WeChat is no doubt significant for branding, attributed to its high penetration rate on mobile. While Coca Cola has been testing water in mobile marketing, WeChat will positively help it improve consumer participation, get closer to the young and boost sale.
• For the first time, the manufacturer uses a combination of Pincode and mobile internet to pull offline consumers to online, then retains and interacts with them. When participating in this activity, consumers need to follow the official Coca Cola account on WeChat, so consumers are retained and might become die-hard fans of Coca Cola. It increases the consumer stickiness, as well as the feedback value of Pincode.
• The tripartite cooperation (Coca Cola, WeChat and Yixun) inspires other enterprises with innovation and creative ideas of WeChat marketing. WeChat is more than an information carrier; WeChat marketing is not only a single pattern of information push, fans interaction, customer service or online transaction, but a combination of sources for marketing. In this way conversion will be easier. Many FMCG enterprises are expecting a cooperation opportunity, however not all brands have the chance to cooperate with WeChat and Yixun.

How to do WeChat marketing? There have been many representative cases, but Coca Cola gave us an inspiration. The primary user group of WeChat is the young, coinciding with the younger brand image of Coca Cola. Online shopping, WeChat interaction and “seckill”, these tactics are all preferred by young consumers, helping Coca Cola get close to the young people. “3PM drink and win Coca Cola” integrate the online and offline advertising sources, and WeChat utilized its advantage on mobile to offer marketing and service scenario. It brings branding and promotion closer and provides other brands a reference for mobile marketing. “WeChat and Didi” and “WeChat and Red Envelope” both caught people’s eye, now “WeChat and Coca Cola” would very likely to be popular with consumers and becomes a typical crossover marketing case in 2014.

According to report released by CTCNN, overall transaction of China vacation travel market reached 317.43 billion Yuan (USD 51.7 billion) in 2013. Vacation travel transaction through online channel was 29.3 billion Yuan(USD 4.8 billion), accounting for 9.2%. For online vacation travel market, Ctrip contributed 23.3% of annual transaction, ranking the first. The second, Tuniu.com, took up 9.8%, followed by Lvmama.com with 3.4%.

CTCNN suggested there would be following characteristics of China online vacation travel market in 2014:

• Government was advocating thrift and the Tourism Law hit the industry harshly in 2013. Therefore, 2014 would be a turning point for transformation and upgrading of travel agencies. Online (and mobile) market, service popularization, capital diversification, market concentration would be key words for traditional travel agencies.
• Travel product was entering an era of good quality. Standardization and transparency became the fundamental elements of online travel product. Online travel agencies would develop even faster in 2014.
• The rapid increasing mobile market would boost mobile travel client. Self-guided tour, tickets package, destination service would lead the market.
• Those relative independent part of travel services, such as visa, scenic ticket and car rental, were becoming the entry points, as the development of internet and mobile internet.
• “Travel product leftovers” were justified. The market would develop fast with disorder in 2014, and become a growth point for comprehensive enterprises.
• Different type of social fund including VC would embrace travel enterprises with more enthusiasm in 2014, especially online travel agencies. As for traditional travel agencies, they might experience transformation, financing, M&A and even perish.

The pattern of brand awareness of China smartphone market changed a lot in January 2014. Judging by competition situation, smartphone market was gradually entering an era of red ocean; however, as for development prospect, the need of smartphone users was far from being satisfied. Domestic and foreign smartphone vendors were all devoted to meeting users’ different demands of experience. Differentiation became the top priority of mobile manufacturers.

Brand Awareness

On the whole, the competition of brand awareness in China smartphone market was getting more intensely. The accumulative awareness of top 15 brand fell down, representing the lower concentration. Specifically, Samsung topped the ranking with a 20.8% awareness, followed by Apple and Huawei. Awareness of Lenovo was close to Nokia’s, merely 0.4% higher. Coolpad got the sixth place with a 5.6% awareness. The awareness of other brands on the ranking list were all below 5%.

Compared to December 2013, great changes had taken place in just one month. For top 3, Huawei’s awareness rose 2.1 percentage point to the No.3, boosted by new products Honor 3C, 3X and A199. Coolpad also rose 1% with the help of new awesome product, up one rank to seven.

Product Awareness

Apple iPhone 5S (16GB) was still far ahead of other product with a 4.0% awareness. Meanwhile, Apple iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5C were also on the list, making Apple the listed brand with  most products.

The second was Samsung with three products on the list in January. Samsung GALAXY Note 3 (N9006/single SIM card/16GB) ranked the second with 3.0%. GALAXY S4 and GALAXY Note 2 ranked No.4 and No.13 respectively.

It is noteworthy that the newly marketed Huawei Honor 3C (1 GB RAM/China Mobile version) made the top 3 place with a 2.7% awareness, the highest awareness among domestic smartphones. And Meizu MX3 (non-NFC/16GB/Ordinary) ranked No.5.

In terms of price, mid-end phones bwteen 1,000-2,000 Yuan (USD 163 to 326) were still the focus, with awareness of 27.5%. Followed by products of 3,001-4,000 Yuan (USD 490 to 653), its awareness was above 20% too. The awareness of products below 1,000 Yuan (USD 163) and 2,001-3,000 Yuan (USD 326 to 490) were both close to 20%. High-end smartphones over 4,000 Yuan (USD 653) reached 13.9% brand awareness.

For operating system, Android was in the unshakable mainstream position as before, with a awareness of 80.2%. The awareness of Apple iOS was 11.9%, followed by slow growing Windows phone of 7.0%. Other OS shrunk in this month.

For numbers of CPU cores, the position of quad-core phones was more stable. In January quad-core smartphone won 55.5% awareness, followed by dual-core with over 30%. Eight-core/two quad-core phones had low awareness so far. ZDC predicted that awareness of eight-core phones wouldn’t increase rapidly in short term, as a consequence of high price and low experience improvement.

According to ZDC, smartphones with 4.6-5.0 inch screen were the most popular device, getting a 33.9% awareness. The awareness of 4.1-4.5 inch and 3.6-4.0 inch were very close: 16.3% and 16.5%. Note that smartphones with screen bigger than 5.5 inch had awareness of 15.4% this month.

Among more than 1,000 smartphones on the market, two cameras became the standard. For main camera – the rear camera, phones with 8-8.7 megapixel camera were the mainstream, with a 43.5% awareness. It’s remarkable that awareness of smartphones with over 10 megapixel camera grew fast, reaching 34.5% in January.

In terms of battery capacity, smartphone with 2,000-3,000 mAh battery was favored with a 48.9% awareness, almost the half. The second was below 2,000 mAh battery, with awareness of 32.5%. Affected by high price, smartphones with over 3,000 mAh battery was unpopular so far.

Case Study: Huawei

As ZDC data showed, the awareness of Huawei rocketed to 8.5% in a month, 2.1 points higher compared to December 2013. Huawei beat Nokia and Lenovo to become top 3 in January 2014. ZDC attributed this amazing performance to the increasing awareness of 3C, 3X and A199.

Huawei had 56 products on the market at present, mostly equipped with 4.5 inch or 5.0 inch screen. Each size accounted for over 20%. Huawei’s product with 5.0 inch screen was the most popular, with a 52.4% awareness. The awareness of products with 4.5 inch or 4.7 inch screen were both below 20%.

Conclusion

In January 2014, the strength of domestic brands in smartphone market was enhanced. At the same time, competition between domestic phone manufacturers was heating up. Under the market environment of homogenization, the more creative you are, the longer you will stand.

WeChat may be the fiercest competitor of WhatsApp in the world. By August 2013, WeChat got 272 million monthly active users, and over 100 million oversea users. Now WeChat broke another 100 million mark: 100 million times download in Google Play.

Poshu Yeung, the vice president of Tencent IBG (international business group), said in a statement that Tencent would remain committed to offering easy-to-use and integrative experience for users. Furthermore, WeChat just launched mobile games for international markets recently. It made WeChat more like a social platform rather than a simple mobile IM.