In the first half of 2017, financial management software and mobile apps continued to develop, while offline providers of such services have shifted from opposition into a more productive mindset seeking partnerships and cooperation even as interest rates in online loan and savings applications fall.

Users of online entertainments shifted further towards mobile internet use, with users of music-, game-, video-, and culture-related mobile apps increasing in number by 4%; among them, the number of mobile game users grew by 9.6%.

The income of game studios and similar enterprises has grown significantly, and the IP and copyrights of such companies show signs of becoming a core source of income domestically and abroad.

Services, such as online education, ride-sharing, limousine booking, and bicycle rental have also seen significant growth in their user bases, with 144 million, 278 million, 217 million, and 106 million users, respectively.

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

Tencent released Tencent Entertainment Whitepaper several recently and highlighted entertainment activities of the post-90s. 211 million Chinese post-90s make up 15.4% of the total population in China according to National Bureau of Statistics in 2015. Realize preferences and behaviors of the post-90s will help media, companies and advertisers grab the commanding point.

Nearly 70.0% post-90s get entertainment information from WeChat Moments, Weibo and other social networks. 66.0% post-90s read entertainment information on news websites, among which the male account for the bulk. Only 28.2% will get messages from traditional media.

Male users are more active on news websites compared to the female users among the post-90s. Female post-90s are more likely to receive entertainment information on social networks.

The post-90s love listening to the music and watching movies as entertainment activities. Boys spend much time on games and girls love watching TV shows and variety shows. Girls account for more compared with boys in the celebrity worshipers.

The post-90s love watching movies best and are most willing to spend money on movies in all tier cities. Most female post-90s are willing to spend money on movies and most males are willing to spend money on games in 2015.

Post-90s are not as crazy at celebrity related products as the public suppose. Tier-2 and lower cities post-90s are relatively indulged in celebrities. The female celebrity related products buyers are twice as many as male buyers.

Female are more likely to watch concerts than the male. Post-90s in all cities are relatively willing to watch concerts especially in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas countries.

The post-90s can be influenced by recommendations from friends, families or online reviews on the consumption of entertainment activities besides price. The female are more concerned about prices for entertainment activities.

Nowadays, 56.7% post-90s keep rational attitude towards favorite celebrities and over half will support their works instead of buying related products or spreading good reviews everywhere of their favorable stars. Post-90s in tier-2 and lower cities are more willing to buy more tickets to increase movie revenues for celebrities.

Performers and attracting stories are the greatest motivation for the post-90s to watch movies. 32.9% will go to theaters for good publication designs and 29.6% for the original works. Only 10.6% will watch movies for their directors. And besides features of movies, recommendations from friends are one of the major factors for the post-90s to watch movies.

Due to ever-developing online shopping platforms and mobile apps, 66.2% post-90s buy movie tickets through the internet and 24.4% watch directly on online video platforms. Over 70% post-90s in tier-1 and tier-2 cities are used to buying movie tickets online.

The post-90s love power & scheme plays and spy & suspense plays. Most female prefer romance and ancient story dramas. A total of 28 movies are adapted from scripts which gain 8 billion yuan box office returns in 2015. However, even if their favorable scripts are adapted to movies or plays only 34.5% post-90s are sure to watch.

The ratio who will watch adapted movies among the male post-90s is higher than the female. Post-90s in tier-2 cities may be the future focus of movie propaganda.

China-made music is favored by most post-90s in China. The female prefer oversea music compared with the male. Songs appeared in variety shows especially in music shows draw over 90% post-90s’ attention and 34.7% listen to other songs of the same singers.

Over 90% post-90s are used to listening to the music through online music platforms and only 3.3% still use records to listen to the music. Most post-90s buy the records for collection and reserve.

Paid services are crucial for the development of online video websites and the post-90s may be the driving force of online paid services in the future. Over 38% post-90s have paid for online entertainment activities such as online music and 46.1% may purchase online entertainment services in the future.

The female are more positive on paid services than the male. Post-90s in tier-3 and lower cities are more willing to spend money on online paid services.

Online paid services increase rapidly in 2015 and the growth rate is faster than the growth rate of the advertising market in China. Paid services revenues are expected to keep up with advertising revenues in three or four years later according to the vice President of Tencent. As the major work force in the following decades, the consumption power of the post-90s is immense and it will be better for companies to know what they like and what they dislike.

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

In 2014, China’s online shopping users reached 55.7% of the total internet users. In the mean time, mobile online shopping market was booming in China, with an annual growth rate of 63.5%, 3.2 times higher than the overall online shopping market.

The booming of the mobile shopping market accelerated the strategic layout of companies. The configuration of Chinese online shopping market remain steady. Taobao, Tmall and Jingdong led the market with penetration rates of 87.0%, 69.7% and 45.3% respectively. After being listed on the market, Jumei, Jingdong, Alibaba would broaden their business across the world.

According to China Internet Information Center (CNNIC), about 361.42 million Chinese shopped online in 2014, compared with 301.89 million in 2013. Mobile shopping users increased to 236.09 million, 55.7% of the total.

Almost one-third online shoppers were in the eastern region of China, followed by the southern (18.5%) and northeastern (16.7%). Users in the northwestern were the lowest.

China’s online shopping market  are more versatile compared with some western countries. China online users could buy both real and virtual goods online, some of which are even beyond many westerners’ imaginations. Clothes, computer and digital accessories, virtual cards and household appliance were main categories of online shopping in China.

Based on shopping frequency and expenditure, China online shoppers could be divided into two groups, generic shoppers and frequent shoppers.

Very frequent online shoppers in China spent more than generic shoppers. The average expenditure in half year of 2014 by frequent shoppers reached 12,610 yuan (US$1,976.78), almost five times of 2,687 yuan (US$421.22) by the generic online shoppers.

The omnipotent online shopping contributed 2,789.80 billion yuan (US$437.53 billion) to the total online retail, an increase of 49.7% compared with the same period last year, which was equal to 10.6% of China’s social consumer goods retail. China (US$41,151.50 billion) was the largest online shopping market in 2014, followed by the United States (US$3,056.50 billion).

Featured as online shopping market, the displayed information couldn’t show realistic meaning and value of products; thus product reputation, business or company’s fame, together with price were top three influencing factors from the view of consumers. Delivery time was also one of the purchase decision factors.

Affected by household income level, 11.6% showed they were willing sacrifice quality in shopping online, and 51% would consider quality and price both.

Payment channels for online shopping were diversified in China. Third party payment(eg.Alipay) was the mainstream channel, with penetration rate as high as 82.9%, and followed by online banking payment and quick payment.

The Chinese government published corresponding regulations to protect consumers’ rights and interests, one of which with a large impact was the ‘7-day refund; no question asked’. 30% online shoppers once refunded goods, and 75% resolved the refund successfully.

Invoice consciousness was not so strong in Chinese minds. During online shopping, only 11.9% asked for invoices each time, and 58.1% haven’t asked for any.

Online shopping for overseas goods gradually became a common practice of Chinese online shoppers. In 2014, only 4.8% admitted shopping for overseas goods; however, with many B2C companies realizing the potential, the group will grow in the future.

Clothes were first choices of 45.5% Chinese online shoppers shopping overseas. America, South Korea, and Japan were the hottest shopping destinations. The average order price of cross-border shoppers was higher than the overall online shopping. In 2014, the annual average spned of online cross-border shoppers was 4989 yuan (US$782.10), 64.1% of the overall.

66.4% users chose to purchase overseas goods online due to the high quality in some foreign countries, and half due to lower prices. However, online shoppers sometimes faced problems such as long delivery time, damaged or loss of goods, hard to check and unable to refund or return.

Social e-business wasn’t a new concept in China. As early as 2011, Chinese companies began the exploration in the social network and online shopping market. According to the research by CNNIC, online shoppers accounted for 70.6% of WeChat users, 55.2% of QQ users, and 36.5% of Sina Weibo users, which had a tremendous potential.

About 46.6% social networking users showed tolerance towards advertisements and marketing in social media. 27.8% users once forwarded messages and information of these websites, and 33.8% finally made orders following the promotion information.

China’s social media shopping had good genes and soil, with the continuous development of e-business market and acceleration of major companies, the proportion of this group and online overseas shoppers could be significantly increased.

Also read: China E-Payment Insights 2015

With the booming of the new emerging market, automobile has become less expensive, and the internet has brought an open platform which makes it more reachable to families. China Automotive Technology Research Center estimated last year that automobile sales volume will reach 25.5 million in 2015 and 35 million in 2020 with average annual growth rate of 7%.

Tencent made a research on China’s automobile consumption after surveying 33,729 internet users, 83.5% of which are between 21 to 45 years old, 30% with high school degree, 34.8% with a bachelor degree or higher. The survey was made across over 20 provinces in all levels of city tiers.

According to the research, the number of car-owners in the second or third tier cities have similar purchase intentions as that in the first-tier cities; about 30% users plan to become car-owners in one year, especially in second and third tier cities. There is still a large potentially bigger automobile market in China.

Also read: Chinese Luxury Traveler Insights 2015

Encouraged by the success of some social networking apps as WeChat, many leading social networks across the world start integrating online commerce capabilities for new areas of revenues.

Combined MAU (monthly active users) of Weixin and WeChat were 600 million, an increase of 37% YoY in Q2 2015, according to Tencent’s unaudited consolidated results for the second quarter of 2015, and the social networking revenue increased 18% YoY to $853 million, major resulted from WeChat commerce.

Among the global social network users, one-third utilized product search as the major driving force of using social media. In June 2015, one-fourth Facebook active users had searched to find products. Social networking users are also enthusiastic online shoppers; two-thirds of Facebook users shopped online; seven-tenths Snapchat users and three-fourths Instagram users also shopped online.

However, so far the social networking purchase feature has not attracted the majority of users. Only one-tenth of active users indicated that such shopping feature increased the possibility of online shopping. Social networking users were used to employ social networking as the early platform of online shopping while completing the whole shopping process on social networks might still be a challenge.

Also read: 12% of Cross-border Online Shopping in China from Shanghai

In 2015, China mobile social networking users will reach 335.9 million with an increase of 20.7%, estimated by eMarketer. Besides, the number will continue grow and by 2019, users will exceed 480.4 million, representing 34.8% of total population.

In 2015, 83.0% of China social network users, and 32.5% of mobile phone users will use their devices for social networking at least monthly according to eMarketer’s research. Penetration is 57%, which is a bit higher as a percentage of China’s mobile phone internet users.

Also read: China Mobile Social Networking Overview & Top Apps

Business social networking is growing fast in China nowadays. According to Tencent’s latest  research, 52.9% respondents used business communication tools in their companies in 2014 including Tencent RTX, Enterprise Fetion, Enteprise QQ as well as Netease EIM.

According to the latest data of Tencent’s research, the most used communication tool in the company was QQ, which accounted for 37.6%, followed by WeChat(23%).

Although the popularity of company communication tools was over 50% in 2014, only 14.5% of users took the tools as most used communication tools in the company which indicates there are many issues that need to be solved for business communication.

46.4% respondents showed their concern about not having effective communication tools in the company in the research in 2014.

Most used feature is to search for colleagues’ contacts which made it the most important function of company communication tools at work.

As the rapid development of mobile internet, mobile working is popular. It is more convenient to login on mobile phone as well as desktop.

There are more challenges for paid company communication tools in China. 74% respondents did not pay for such tools according to Tencent’s research.

53.9% respondents wanted Company WeChat Moments to share their working updates in the research.

Also read: China Mobile Social Networking Overview & Top Apps

China post-90s are the active group on the internet, especially on social media; and, China post-90s QQ users accounted for 39% of total users according to data released on Tencent’s Open Day. They favor mobile shopping and online videos.

China post-90s on the internet who are between 15 and 24 years old were more than the average number of post-90s in the world according to the research of ComScore.

Also read: China Online Shopper Spent $12.5 Billion Buying from Oversea E-tailers

China social video market evolved from three areas: traditional online chat room, online video community and instant messenger on webpage. With rapid development of China mobile internet, mobile social video companies are springing up nowadays in China.

In 2013, total users of China social video exceeded 140 million with an increase of 37.3% QoQ. It is estimated that the number of users would be 191 million by end of 2014 in China. Further, it will still keeping stable growth in the next few years.

The transaction value of China social video market had overwhelming growth in 2010 and 2011. And the transaction value of 2013 was RMB3.69 billion (US$602.24 million) with an increase of 57.1% QoQ. It is estimated that in 2014, the transaction value is expected to exceed RMB5.25 billion (US$856.84 million).

The major profit of China social video market is from paying users. Users can interact with video anchors or obtain advanced membership service by paying.

Social media service users accounted for 92.6% of total China Internet users in August 2014 according to data from iResearch. 

With rapid online applications development on mobile device, social media has been one of the most important service on mobile device. And then social video market will tend to make efforts on mobile device in the future.

Also read: China Mobile Social Networking Overview & Top Apps

As of June 2014, the usage rate of mobile games in China was 47.8% with an increase of 4.7%. Mobile gaming is becoming a habit for many China mobile users’ daily life.

Total transaction value of China mobile gaming market is expected to be over RMB20 billion ($3.27 billion) in 2014. Furthermore, it is estimated that the number of total value will exceed RMB40-50 billion in 2015 with an average growth rate of 100%.

Compared with the transaction value of China mobile gaming market in 2012, it doubled in 2013. In 2014, China mobile gaming market is still growing rapidly.

As of September 30 2014, the top 3 provinces in China by total number of mobile gaming users were Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. With popularity of smartphone, China’s middle and western parts will show their potential in mobile gaming market in the future.

Over 39% mobile gaming users play single games while only 10.89% of them play online games which indicates China mobile gaming users tend to play games with Wifi to save large data cost.

Card games are favorite of most China mobile gaming users. Shooting and fighting games are popular among heavy game players.

Most mobile gaming users favored playing online mobile games with Wifi, accounting for 48% of total mobile gaming users. And with the popularity of 4G and traffic promotion of three telco operators (China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom), traffic issue can not be a big concern in China mobile gaming market.

Mobile phones based on Android are the major ones for Chinese mobile gaming users, accounting for 78.1%, followed by iOS and Windows Phone.

In Q3 2014, China mobile gaming users’ total spend on mobile gaming was much more than the spend in the same period in prior year. The rapid development of online mobile trading platform, popularity of 3G/ 4G and powerful marketing of social network gave mobile gaming market powerful strength.

Also read: China Mobile Online Gaming Market in Q2 2014

During period from 4 August to 10 August, Tencent QQ’s daily user coverage exceeded 220.75 million, accounting for 63.5%, ranking the top among China online instant messengers, followed by Aliwangwang (11.6%) and Fetion (2.7%) according to data from iResearch.

The latest data shows that during the same period, effective time on Tencent QQ went up to 759.33 million hours, accounting for 90.7% of total effective time in China instant messengers market while Aliwangwang accounted for 5.7% and Tencent’s IM for enterprises Real Time eXpert accounted for 0.9%.

Also read: Analysis on China’s Top Mobile Messenger Apps

Renren’s total net revenues for the second quarter of 2014 were US$25.0 million, representing a 42.4% decrease from the corresponding period in 2013 according to Renren unaudited financial report.

Renren net revenues were US$15.1 million, representing a 26.7% decrease from the corresponding period of 2013. Within Renren net revenues, online advertising revenues were US$11.7 million for the second quarter of 2014, a 23.9% decrease from the corresponding period of 2013.

Internet Value-Added Services (IVAS) revenues were US$3.4 million, representing a 35.0% decrease from the corresponding period in 2013. Monthly unique log-in users decreased from approximately 54 million in June 2013 to approximately 44 million in June 2014.

Games net revenues were US$9.9 million for the second quarter of 2014, a 56.6% decrease from the corresponding period of 2013. Renren.com had approximately 214 million activated users as of June 30, 2014.

The Company expects to generate revenues in an amount ranging from US$19 million to US$21 million in the third quarter of 2014, representing a 48.9% to 53.8% year-over-year decline.

The total number of business social networking users in China was only 3.7 million in 2008 but experienced high growth rate last year to over 31 million according to iResearch January data.

China’s Top Professional Social Networking Websites

According to Chinese research company iResearch’s data this January, Dajie.com is leading the business social networking race, followed by Wealink.com, Renhe.cn, Tianji.com and Ushi.com.

Dajie.com was launched in April 2009, focusing on University students recruitment. It expanded to target Chinese white collar with more social networking features. Dajie’s total registered users reached 24 million in June 2013.

Compared with LinkedIn’s 300 million users, China’s business social network is still in its early stage.

Demographics of China’s Business Social Networking Users

The average age of China’s professional social  networking websites is 30, which is the post-80s internet users.

China’s professional social networking users are more educated than overall China internet users with 68% having Bachelor’s Degree or higher. Their average income is about 7,500 yuan and nearly half (49%) are married with kids.

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Renren released their new mobile app on November 26 2013, re-positioning to target young students as their core users. It could also be viewed as the return of Renren.

In 2009, Renren changed its name from “xiaonei” to “renren” and allowed non-student users to register accounts. It encountered strong objects from some students then, they thought it would jeopardize the purity of xiaonei users.

According to data from Renren, the registered accounts reached 194 million. The number of monthly active users reached 54 million, over 75% active users were post-90s. Renren targeted its users on post-90s, most of which are students.

CEO Chen Yizhou said renren was a focused and changing company, renren needed to focus on young students when the era of  mobile internet came. Renren changed from SNS (Social Networking Services) to SMS (Short Message Service), the new version mobile app reinforced instant messaging and group messaging.

Renren also launched new PC version software.

According to Jia This, a social sharing aggregation provider which offers sharing and favorite buttons for over 800,000 Chinese websites, Qzone ranked the top in October social network sharing platforms. Wechat rose from the sixth to fourth, and renren dropped from fifth to sixth in October.

Right before Double 11, E-Commerce shopping information sharing reached to apex. For example, Suning product topics daily sharing hit 200,000. 63.23% of these users were between the age of 25 to 39 years old.

Wechat published its official data on November 18 2013. There years after the launch of Wechat, it has covered more than 200 countries in the world, published over 20 languages versions, and its total monthly active users reached 270 million. Wechat official platform accounts grew to 2 million in 15 months, increasing 8,000 per day.

In the future, Wechat will improve its capacity and information processing ability. It will cooperate with Tencent’s soso map to offer more functions based on LBS. Meanwhile, mobile payment is essential to Wechat, Wechat will be applied in many business situations.

On November 11 2013, or known as Double 11 shopping carnival, Wechat joined with 51buy and the single day transaction amount reached 80,000, which occupied 13% of 51buy total transaction.

Wechat will be more open, now it has over 20,000 apps accessed to Wechat and users could share it to friends and in friend circle. Wechat plans to open map API and offer a series of LBS services.

According to iResearch, SNS in PC-end grew steadily, and the traffic in mobile-end and PC-end became closer. In PC-end, Weibo and social services kept increasing, while in mobile-end, Wechat was the main driving force.

In August 2013, friends-making social networks reached 430 million monthly coverage, with a 0.2% YoY increase and a 1.3% QoQ drop. IM ranked the top of social services, with 471 million monthly coverage, followed by search and online videos.

Besides, mobile traffic increased sharply driven by Wechat. In August, monthly time spent on Apps increased 251.1% annually, PC-end traffic dropped 31.3%. Especially for friends making social services, the growth in mobile-end decreased its growth in PC-end.

Wechat users’ monthly viewing time added up to 750 million hours, with a 495.9% YoY increase. Wechat friends circle and public accounts were the main reasons for user stickness.

Wechat announced on October 29 2013, Wechat would open a number of APIs to verified public accounts. It would charge public accounts for 300 yuan (USD 49) annually for verification fee.

User profile API allows public accounts to get user ID and location information. It is a good news for third-party developers, they could build up member information.

Grouping followers API allows account manager to group followers and send them messages separately.

Location API could get users location information. It’s very crucial for LBS app.

However, some API would not be opened to all public accounts.

Wechat payment API is crucial for Tencent’s mobile shopping strategy, even Jack Ma, former CEO of Alibaba was afraid of Wechat payment. Tencent is quite cautious about Wechat payment API, therefore, they would only open it to a few verified accounts. Enterprises need to get verification from Tenpay, which requires a lot of certifications.

Message sending API allows public accounts to send messages one on one with no number limits. Wechat focuses on user experience, so this API would not open to most public accounts either.

Follow me API allows users to follow public accounts on webpage or sharing pages by simply clicking the following button. This time, it would not open to every public accounts.

Sharing API allows users to share the pages by clicking the sharing button on pages. It would not completely open, either.

Unfollow API allows public account managers to see the people even if they have unfollowed the public account.

Address API allows public account managers to gain users’ address to receive packages from other public accounts.

CRM API allows enterprises to upload their members’ information. Whether it will open or not, we cannot say right now.

The core of Wechat open API new policies is to improve user experience. For public accounts managers, they should try to improve their services to attract users rather than simply advertising themselves.

GlobalWebIndex found that Google Maps was the top app by monthly usage rate last July, as high as 54%. Followed by Facebook, Youtube, and Google+.

Tencent’s Wechat or known, as Weixin in China, came to the fifth place in world mobile ranking, with 27% usage rate. Twitter fell behind Wechat, with 22%. Instagram was ranked the tenth, with 11% active users.

According to Sootoo.com, there are more than 70 million users on China’s professional social networking sites by the end of Nov 2012. The number of users has increased by 250% compared with 20 million last year. It is estimated that there will be 100 million professional social networking users in three months.

Professional SNS like Dajie, Tianji, Ruoling, who started early, have more than 10 million users registered while those late comers – Ushi, Binzhi, Renhe – gained 1,000,000 users and are targeting 5 million.

In just one year after LinkedIn going public, China’s social networking sites for professionals ushered in the golden age of development. 66% of popular professional SNS launched in the year of 2008. Gaoren and Jingwei just stepped into this market in 2011.