China's mobile internet is booming, with active users surging past 1.23 billion in March 2024, a jump of over 20 million year-on-year, according to QuestMobile.

This growth underscores the continued dominance of mobile in China's digital landscape. QuestMobile also unveiled its ranking of the top 50 apps for Q1 2024 (below) across diverse categories, providing a fascinating snapshot of the apps captivating Chinese consumers.

The list, which excludes categories like app stores, carrier services, and gaming platforms, highlights the leading app in each sector based on average MAU over the three-month period.

Unsurprisingly, Tencent's WeChat reigns supreme, towering over the competition with over 1 billion MAU. It's the only app to breach the 1 billion user mark, solidifying its status as the undisputed king of China's mobile ecosystem.

Alibaba's Taobao and Alipay secure the second and third spots with 921 million and 800 million MAU, respectively, demonstrating the end...

Mobile app download channels integrated with users' lifestyle use case scenarios have gradually become the focus of mobile app vendors, shortening the download process and improving the user experience.

The top download sources of mobile apps in June 2022 in China are Huawei App Store (909 million downloads), App Store (729M), and Oppo App Store (528M), according to data from QuestMobile.

Top 10 Download Sources of Mobile Apps in China

Among the top 10 sources, only App Store (6.3%), Baidu, and TapTap saw positive growth compared with June 2021.

Statistics: China Apps List (Top mobile apps by MAU)...

China's grocery consumption retail market is estimated to reach 5469.7 billion yuan in 2021 and exceed 6817.3 billion yuan by 2025.

Grocery Consumption by Categories

Grocery retail market

Online contributed to 14.6% of the total grocery retail market in China in 2020 from 8.8% in 2019.

China grocery e-commerce market is estimated to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan (US$187 billion) by 2023 from 458.5 billion yuan (US$72 billion) in 2020.

China's grocery B2C e-commerce transactions totaled 544.94 billion yuan in 2019 and are estimated to exceed 1.38 trillion yuan by 2022 according to Analysis.

74.8% of the market is dominated by mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD, Pinduoduo while the grocery vertical e-commerce platforms have a 25.2% market share.

Grocery e-commerce's penetration among China's interne...

China senior internet users, who are above 50 years old, reached a record number of 275 million as of January 2022, according to data from QuestMobile.

The seniors in China spend an average of 5.7 hours per day on the internet, down from 6.2 hours a year ago.

Mobile phones, TV, and Desktop computers are the top devices for senior internet users' access to the internet.

Amogn the seniors, the top shopping mobile apps are Taobao and Pinduoduo which saw 141 million and 126 million MAU.

Overall, the top 5 applications by the senior internet users are instant messaging, online videos, government services, news, and payment.

Top 10 forecasts of China's smart home market...

Mini Programs (MP) are light applications designed to run on top of a specific mobile app. Top technology companies in China have designed and run their own mini-program framework; and, the most popular ones include WeChat platform, Alibaba (Alipay platform; Taobao platform), Baidu Smart Program, and QuickApp.

Lifestyle service is the most popular category on all three mini-program platforms in 2020. Find out the top applications on WeChat, Alipay, and Baidu platforms.

Over half of the top 100 mobile apps in China had developed their mini-programs as of October 2020, according to QuestMobile.

WeChat Mini Program DAU exceeded 400 million as of August 2020 while Baidu and Alipay's mini program MAU exceeded 414 million and 500 million respectively in 2020.

Tencent and Alibaba owns over a quarter of the mini programs on their own MP platforms while Baidu only owns 10% of all smart mini-programs running on Baidu app.

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The number of monthly active users of WeChat Mini Programs has exceeded 863 million (as of December 2020) according to data from QuestMobile.

On average, each WeChat user uses 5.6 mini programs in December 2020, up from 5.1 a year ago.

The average time spent per user on WeChat Mini Programs increased by over 27% to 68.15 minutes.

Top WeChat Mini Program categories by MAU growth are Lifestyle Services, Business, Shopping, and Education in September 2020.

The GMV of mini-programs transactions has increased by 115% YoY, and the self-operated GMV of brand merchants has increased by 210% YoY, according to data shared at Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit.

Pinduoduo secured more younger users on this platform. The fastest-growing industries utilizing WeChat Mini Programs are daily commodities, luxury goods, shopping centers and department stores.

The total GMV of mini programs in the first half of 2020 has reached the full year GMV in 2019. Total GMV in 2020 is...

The number of online education users in China skyrocketed in 2020 and reached 341.7 million as of December 31, 2020, accounting for 34.6% of internet users.

Mobile online education users rose sharply and exceeded 340.7 million in 2020.

China's online education is estimated to be a 400.38 billion yuan (US$58.51 billion) market in 2020, with a growth rate of over 24%.

The pandemic has a positive impact on the K12 sector but slows down territory education and vocational education due to the delayed or canceled examinations and overseas study.

K12 training, tertiary education, and vocational education are the most important parts of online education in China.

K12 training is of rigid demand. The epidemic situation forces the original offline learning scene to be transferred online, cultivating a new user habit. At the same time, the epidemic situation also catalyzes the investment in research and development of software and hardware facilities related to onli...

The monthly active mobile users of China's blue-collar population has more than doubled from July 2016 to July 2020, from 15.48 million to 33.79 million, with an average annual growth of 21.5%.

In the first and second-tier cities, the blue-collar is very active. However, the third and lower-tier cities also have great growth potential.

The post-80s and post-90s are the main groups of new blue-collar workers, accounting for nearly 70% of the total; with the growth of the post-00s, the new blue-collar team is getting younger.

Most of the new blue-collar workers in China are male, and the couriers, especially the delivery riders, tended to be young unmarried people, while the drivers of online car hailing services are mostly elderly married people.

The new blue-collar group has a wide range of interests, which also reflects their professional characteristics and lifestyle background; takeaway riders and couriers show a stronger interest in social networking, en...

China has the largest group of Generation Z (Gen Z) in the world with a population of 149 million. Gen Z is between 15 and 23-year-old and will account for 40% of consumption power in 2020. Their average time spend on mobile internet is 4.7 hours per day. And, they like Zhihu, Tantan, Xiaohongshu more than WeChat.

China's Gen-Z has an average monthly income of 3,501 yuan (US$493), among which the studying group (19-23 years old) has multiple sources of income. Their top interests are video, social networking, music, online shopping, and gaming.

They spend an average of 56.2 minutes daily on social networking and instant messaging. Videos also take a significant amount of their time (over 53 minutes).

Word of mouth through friends is the top source for China's Gen-Z to know products, followed by online ads, shopping mall, TV commercials, and etc.

Gen-Z Sources of Products Discovery: Male vs. Fema...

Bytedance's TikTok is the most popular mobile app in the first half of 2020 in the global markets outside China with close to 600 million downloads with an increase of 88.7% YoY. Half of the Top 20 are owned by three Chinese companies: Bytedance, Joyy, and Kuaishou (Kwai). Xiaomi's app made it to Top 10.

India, Brazil, and the United States are TikTok's top 3 markets, accounting for 27.5%, 9.6%, and 8.2% according to research company SensorTower. TikTok has become an important channels for the youth to record and share their life.

Bigo Live, a live streaming app owned by Joyy (NASDAQ:YY), saw 58 million downloads in H1 2020, with an increase of 48.2% YoY; its top 3 countries are India, Indonesia and Pakistan, accounting for 23.6%, 10% and 6.5% respectively.

Xiaomi's short video app Zili also made it to Top 10 in H1 2020.
Top 20 Chinese Short Video / Live Streaming Mobile Apps by Global Downloads (iOS+Google Play)

TikTok (Bytedance)
Likee (Joyy)
Helo (Bytedance)
...

Alibaba launched a "Lite" version of its DingTalk, an enterprise communication and collaboration platform in early April 2020. And, ByteDance also launched a light version of its enterprise messaging app Feishu.

Launching a "Lite" version of a mobile app is a common tactic in the Chinese companies' competitions, which is a lightweight version of the original app with a focus on key features and simplified user experience. This article shares insights on the rational and growth strategies behind "Lite" apps.
More and more lite apps launched in 2019
In 2019, "lite" mobile apps experienced explosive growth. The number of "Lite" apps grew to over 75 as of October 2019 from 14 in October 2018.

So far, various types of lite applications have acquired over 130 million mobile internet users, increasing by over 2.5 times, according to data from QuestMobile.

Many internet players have participated in this new race, including the top technology companies. Lite applications are becoming...

The Daily Active Users (DAU) of mini programs in China has already surpassed 450 million, according to Aladdin's report released in March 2020, a 3rd party mini program data platform.

The number of available mini programs on the market reached 3.9 million, 600,000 more compared to 2 months earlier. As a comparison, Apple Store has only 2.6 million mobile apps accumulatively over the 11 years of development.

Replacement rate of the Top 100 list of Aladdin achieved 53%.

Mini program, introduced 3 years ago as a technical standard, has been adopted by top internet companies in China with WeChat, Alipay, and Baidu leading the market.

Thanks to its characteristics of easy sharing and low development costs, it has become the top choice for many developers during the Covid-19 epidemic.

During this period, a larges number of mini programs introduced by players in the traditional sectors such as restaurants, shopping malls, brands and channels.

Though bricks-and-mortars bu...

Short video penetration exceeded 70% in Q3 2019 with 810 million active users in Sep. The growth is still strong with about 25% YoY increase in MAU.

ByteDance dominates China's short video segment with three mobile apps - TikTok (Douyin), Xigua, and Huoshan with a total penetration of 72.1% in Sep 2019.

Kuaishou and Baidu have about 42% and 8.8% penetration rate respectively. Bytedance has a total short video timeshare of 66.5% in Sep 2019, followed by Kuaishou of 26.6%. Kuaishou live broadcast DAU exceeded 100 million in 2019.

38.2% of users made a purchase in September 2019 after watching related short videos, 58.8% of which were from lower-tier cities.

Most users (62%) are active with one short video mobile app while 20% use two apps.

ByteDance now accounts for close to a quarter (23%) of China’s digital advertising market, close to 50 billion yuan in H1 2019.

By 2020, media p...

The unique active devices of China mobile internet grow slightly to 1.41 billion units in September 2019; and, the active users on PC is about 500 million. The daily average usage time of mobile internet in China grew 7.3% YoY. And, the top mobile app categories by the average usage time growth are short videos.

China Internet Users 2017-2019: PC vs. Mobile

The youth in lower-tier cities in China has a stronger online consumption capacity, compared with overall internet users and the general lower-tier city online users.

The daily average usage time of mobile internet in China grew 7.3% YoY to 359.8 minutes per user in September 2019.

And, the categories of the top apps by the average usage time in September 2019 are videos (24.6 hours), instant messenger (23.7 hours), and utility (10.4 hours).

The top categories by the average usage time growth are short videos (64% YoY), e-commerce (7...