Lower-tier Chinese cities (tier-4 and lower) saw the largest growth of 21.7% in active mobile devices in Q1 2020. More users in the above 40 years old age group (14% growth) were observed.

Check out the updated Mobile Apps Overview 2020 here including top mobile app categories by the total number of apps, usage time, total users. And, check out the top growing mobile app categories by total new users, city tiers, age groups,

As of July 2017, there were 751 million internet users in China, a figure which increased by 19.92 million in the first half of this year. The proportion of internet users as a part of the total population has reached 54.3%, 1.1 percentage points higher than in 2016.

The number of mobile internet users in China rose by 28.3 million to reach 724 million at the end of the first half of 2017; mobile internet users also accounted for 96.3% of internet users (non-exclusive), up from 95.1% at the end of 2016.

The gender of internet users in China is nearly identical to the split in the population at large; 52.4% of internet users are male (vs. 51.2% of the general population) and 47.6% are female (48.8% of the general population).

Internet users are also generally younger than the populace as a whole. 72.1% of internet users are between the ages of 10 and 39. Among users aged 40 and over, penetration rates increased by 1.7 percentage points over the first half of 2017.

Incomes among internet users were concentrated among the 2001-3000 yuan/month (US$300-450 /month) and 3001-5000 yuan/month (US$451-750/month) ranges, with the former accounting for 15.8% of users.

Download the details in the updated China Internet Insights report here.

There was a total of 1.36 billion mobile phone users in China at the end of June 2017 according to the latest official data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, an increase of 42.74 million compared the beginning of the year.

888 million China’s mobile users are 4G users, an increase of 118 million. 4G network penetration is up to 65.1%. In total, there are 1.17 billion mobile internet users in China, an increase of 79.38 million during the first half of 2017, with 3G and 4G users accounting for 1.04 billion of those, an increase of 96.05 million.

In June, per capita mobile data use reached 1.591 GB/month, which is 125% higher than in June 2016, when the figure was 707 MB/month. Mobile data use first exceeded 1 GB/month in December 2016, and has grown rapidly throughout 2017 except for a brief dip in February.

From January to June 2017, over 8.89 billion GB of mobile data were used, 136.8% higher than in the first half of 2016. Of this, cell phones accounted for 8.31 billion GB of data consumption, a total of 93.5% of all mobile data, and 147.3% higher than the year prior.

Continue to read: China’s mobile social app users insights 2017

China internet users totaled 731 million as of Dec 2016, an addition of 42.99 million from Dec 2015. Internet penetration rate reached 53.2%, up 2.9 percentage points from 2015.

China mobile internet users totaled 695 million as of Dec 2016, an increase of 75.5 million from Dec 2015 and 95.1% of total internet users.

Rural areas have 201 million internet users, accounting for 27.4% of all China internet users.

60.1% and 36.8% of China internet users connect to the internet via desktop and laptop respectively; mobile devices 95.1%; tablets 31.5%; and, TV 25%.

Mobile online payment users continued to grow in 2016 and reached 469 million, an increase of 31.2% YoY. The proportion of China internet users making mobile online payment increased to 67.5% in 2016 from 57.7% in 2015. 50.3% of China internet users use mobile devices for payment in offline retail stores.

China internet car-hailing users reached 168 million, an increase of 46.16 million or 37.9% from June 2016.

45.3% of Chinese companies deployed online sales activities; 45.6% online purchase; and, 38.7% online marketing. The number of public listed internet companies in China reached 91 with a total market value of 5.4 trillion yuan. The combined market value of Alibaba and Tencent exceeded 3 trillion yuan in 2016.

Download China Internet Statistics Whitepaper 2017 (free) or China Internet Insights (E-Book) here.

Also read: Top WeChat stats and trends 2016

81.5% of respondents in a Tencent’s survey said their daily time spent on mobile phones or tablets is over one hour. Almost half (46.6%) would spend at least 3 hours on mobile devices.

News websites/apps (63%) are the top choices for China mobile internet users obtaining news information, followed by social apps (49.4%) such as WeChat and Weibo.

Mobile clients of portal websites (46.3%) are the most trusted news source, even more credible than TV (40.6%) and clients of traditional media (24.9%).

Print and radio are among the least trusted sources of news information.

Over 57% think social platforms are either very important (24%) or important (33.3%) channels for getting news information, comparing to 47% in a similar survey conducted in 2015.

Social platforms are more popular source of news among China younger internet users:

Nearly 90% respondents, surveyed in a Tencent’s research, watched videos on mobile during the past three months.   Mobile videos are most popular for Chinese users between 20-29 y-o (94%), followed by 30-39 y-o (91%), below 19 (89%), 40-49 (87%), 50 and elder (81%). Over half respondents watched videos every day.

18 to 21 years old users, the post-95s, are most likely to watch videos every day. The number of post-95s accounts for about 78 million in China and they will become the driving force of Chinese consumers in 5 to 10 years according to Tencent.

In terms of the length of mobile videos, clips from 5 to 10 minutes are the most popular, followed by 5 minutes below (23.1%), and 10 to 30 minutes (22.3%).

70% users surveyed by Tencent went to video websites/apps to watch mobile videos, which is a top source for mobile videos, followed by Tencent’s social platforms (58%), news client (13%), and Weibo (8%).

The percentage seems a bit low on Weibo; and, it might be be right to say less than 10% mobile internet users in China watch videos on Weibo. But, it’s certain that social media plays a vital role distributing and promoting videos.

Also read: 70% China Online video Users Watch Over One Hour in 2015

China’s mobile reading market reached 2.47 billion yuan (US$0.38 billion) including reading on web pages, Weibo, WeChat, mobile news apps, mobile reading apps, etc. as of June 2015 according to Analysys.

Mobile internet users totaled 740 million keeping the same with the previous quarter in Q2 this year. However, transaction values of China’s mobile internet market increased 26.1% to 661.94 billion yuan (US$102.60 billion) in Q2 2015.

China’s mobile reading market was 2.47 billion yuan (US$0.38 billion) with an increase of 3.3% compared to Q1 2015 in Q2 2015. Although the growth rate was slow, the total revenues would increase with more mobile reading apps and premium content entering the market.

Reading was part of the most popular activities in China. Reading on mobile apps had a penetration rate of 59.1% in China’s mobile internet market in Q2 2015, only next to social media and instant messaging.

Mobile reading has been more popular among China’s male internet users. Some reading platforms such as CM Reading released more fantasy and Kungfu novels which male readers preferred. With the rise of feminine consumption group, more romantic fictions would be promoted for catering to them.

Post-80s and post-90s under 30 years old accounted for over 60% of all mobile readers in July 2015. They had more spare time for reading and more strong willingness for paid reading. Mobile readers under 24 years old were expected to be the backbone of the mobile reading market in the future.

Overall, the average income level was low among mobile reading users. Readers with income less than 5,000 yuan (US$775.03) accounted for nearly 80% including students without income sources.

Mobile readers with low education background still accounted for the majority in China in July 2015. Readers with college, Junior college, high school and junior high school degree made up over 80% of total mobile readers.

QQ Reading delivered the best reading experience to mobile readers according to the satisfied degree in July 2015.

Qiandian was the largest reading app in China with an overwhelming large book storage, followed by QQ Reading and Netease Yuedu. Large book storage was one of the most important hardware China’s mobile reading apps should equip to gain more readers.

Also read: China’s Mobile Internet Insights Q1-Q3 2015

China’s mobile internet users reached 901 million as of September of 2015 according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The mobile e-mail users in China have reached 250 million based on the latest report of WPS.

64% e-mail users are used to use e-mail on desktop computers. However, by the further expansion of the mobile internet and smartphones, more people tend to use mobile phones to contact with friends, read news and even work that 56% e-mail users prefer utilizing mobile mailbox every day.

Business mailbox is one of the major reasons of people to open e-mail every day. Business e-mail users in China receive an average of 20 e-mails and send 2 to 3 e-mails every day. Enterprise e-mail users are mainly companies operating the internet, finance, sales and the like as well as some large state-owned enterprises. Mobile business mailbox users almost spend one-fourth of their working hours on mobile mailbox apps.

College students and white collars are major users of personal e-mails in China. In general, a majority of private mailbox users will open once to twice every day although they have two or even more e-mail accounts. College students and white collars who need to apply for jobs or change jobs receive an average of ten e-mails every day and six from online recruitment websites.

Men accounts for 70% of mobile e-mail users and women only 30%. Female mobile e-mail users usually manage e-mails during 9am to 10am while male users are used to handling e-mails at night.

More than 20% users will read through the e-mails to search for news and the average usage time has increased by 50% according to WPS. 15% users check their mailboxes in the subway, 10% will open the mobile e-mail accounts before going to sleep, and 9% even use the mobile apps in the bathroom.

Men aged from 25 to 35 years old play the dominant role among mobile e-mail users. The post-70s don’t use mobile e-mails very often. Only the post-90s who will apply for jobs use mailboxes every day. The post-70s prefer to use 163 Email accounts and Yahoo Email. The post-80s like to use 163 Email, QQ Email, and Gmail. The post-90s are more likely to use QQ Email and Gmail. Mobile mailboxes are most popular in Guangdong, Beijing, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Liaoning. QQ Email, 163 Email, Sina Mail, Gmail and Hotmail are popular private mailboxes:

• QQ Postbox: mainly for students, white collars and people not using the internet too much, mostly for entertainment and everyday communication;
• 163 Postbox & Sina Mail: mainly for individual and business contacts;
• Gmail: users are more likely proficient in networking and computer applications;
• Hotmail: mainly for MSN white-collars.

Also read: China’s Mobile Internet Insights Q1-Q3 2015

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

China’s mobile internet develops rapidly, and mobile internet users in the four-tier cities begin to rise according to a recent report from TalkingData.

By Q3 2015, China is expected to see 1.24 billion active smartphones. From Q4 2014 to Q3 201, the number of mobile devices at the end of each quarter is 1.0615, 1.1315, 1.1815 and 1.2415 billion respectively, but the growth is slowing.

The post-80s, post-90s, and post-00s, combined account for over 72% of the total mobile internet users. Young people under 25 years old account for more than 36.6%.

The growth of China’s mobile users in tier-1 cities is 35.5%; tier-2 33.2% and tier-3 and lower tiers 41.5%.

Users in first-tier cities install and open the most number of mobile apps (43.6).

Brand concentration of mobile devices declines, and domestic smartphone brands continue to gain market share. There is no doubt that Apple is still the leading brand although its market share dropped slightly, followed by Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei.

In January 2015, China’s mobile internet users with Wi-Fi connection account for 56.9% of total; in July 2015, it dropped to 54.9%,. In contrast, 4G network users increase from 5.2% in January 2015 to 11% in July 2015.

Mobile internet users tend to spend less time on traditional apps but more engaged with lifestyle apps. Usage of online gaming apps fell from 34.7% to 34.1%. Social communication, video player, online shopping apps saw different levels of decrease in usage time. Education, healthy care, news, traffic navigation and finance apps gained more usage time. This part of the data presents a very clear development direction of mobile internet to investors and developers.

Among the top 20 mobile apps by the number of monthly users, WeChat accounts for 76.3%, QQ 76.1%, Taobao 40.2%, Alipay wallet 35%, Sogou mobile input 31%.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping in Counties Over $32.16B in 2014

In Q1 2015, China mobile internet users reached 740 million with increase of 1.6% QoQ and 10.27% YoY, which showed stable growth in the mobile internet market according to data from EnfoDesk.

Also read: 24% of Top Global Mobile Internet Unicorns from China

Total active users of China third-party mobile app store exceeded 420 million in Q1 2015. Nearly 58.7% China’s mobile internet users downloaded apps from third-party mobile app store. At present in China, internet enterprises such as 360 Mobile Assistant are competing for market share with mobile phone vendors such as Xiaomi and Huawei.

According to iiMedia’s report in Q1 2015, China third-party mobile app store’s active users was 420 million (excluding App Store users, self-operating app store by mobile phone enterprises and network operators’ mobile app store).

Also read: 70% App Downloads From Mobile App Stores in China

Since 2000, China automobile market has been developing rapidly. As of 2013, average sales volume of automobile increased by 19.8% annually in China. However, the growth slowed in recent two years. China Automotive Technology Research Center estimated that automobile sales volume will reach 25.5 million in 2015 and 35 million in 2020 with average annual growth rate of 7%.

Among China internet users who purchased cars online, 68.8% of them bought their first automobile in life while 23.2% upgraded the old one. Besides, most China internet users would choose to buy new automobile other than second-hand one according to research conducted by iResearch and Yiche.com.

82.8% of respondents purchased automobile for self-driving trip while 77.8% for transportation to work.

China internet users’ automobile budget is between RMB50,000 and RMB200,000 accounting for over 70% in 2014. Automobile has been the mass consumer product in China nowadays. 64.2% of China internet users who purchase cars again would choose the ones with price over RMB150,000 (USD 24,140).

SUV was the first choice for most China internet users (36.9%) who planed to purchase automobile in 2014, followed by mid-sized vehicle (33.2%) and compact vehicle (24.9%).

77.5% of China internet users gained automobile purchase information from internet. People around and auto shows can have also impact on automobile purchase while outdoor ads and traditional media have relatively weak influence.

72.7% of China internet users would access automobile news on automobile vertical websites, followed by portals and search engine.

For most internet users in China who purchased cars online, cross-device access has become the mainstream. Desktop and laptops are still the most regular device for users to access automobile information. With China mobile internet’s development, mobile device are gradually playing a more important role than desktop.

When purchasing automobile, China internet users’ top 3 concerns are fuel consumption, configuration and price. For first purchase of cars, China internet users focus on fuel consumption and price while for those purchase another automobile, they focus on automobile’s configuration, safety, space and brand.

In 2014, 29.8% of respondents bought SUV, which is the favored one for China internet users.

Among respondents who bought automobile in 2014, 89.5% of them purchased in 4S stores and about 70% of them are automobile vertical websites users. The way of purchasing automobile online is becoming popular in China as e-commerce is key part of Chinese people’s life.

Chinese users displayed the highest level of engagement and interactions with brands on social media, according to PwC research. And, a McKinsey survey pointed out that social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China. During 14 days’ promotion on Weibo, a total number of over 60 thousand cars were ordered with a total worth of over RMB9.2 billion (US$1.5 billion).

In China, mobile internet users exceeded 500 million in 2013 with penetration of 80.9%. The growth rate of mobile internet users is higher than the one of total internet users.

Compared with China internet users on desktop, the ratio of young male married ones with high education background, high income on mobile device is higher who tend to choose sports cars, imported automobile, and middle and high end automobiles according to iResearch data.

Here is a list of top 10 automobile brands on desktop and mobile device in 2014:

From January to September 2014, the index of replacing passenger vehicle in China continuously rose with monthly compound growth rate of 5.5% according to Yiche.

More online car buyers bought the first car online, especially among freshman for working, newlyweds and new parents. And people with successful career usually upgrade their old ones; family with more than one kid tend to purchase another one.

Also read: China Automobile Market Overview in August 2014