43 million Chinese traveled overseas in Q3 2018 according to COTRI, an increase of 10% year-on-year. A slow decline compared with the growth of 17% in Q1 and 16% in Q2.

Specifically, 20 million person-trips went to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. And, the rest 23 million person-trips went to the rest of the world. COTRI estimates China’s outbound tourism will see over 160 million person-trips in 2018.

Chinese travelers went on 40 thousand person-trips to Nepal in Q3 2018, an increase of 77% year-on-year. That totaled 110 thousand person-trips for the first three quarters of 2018. The whole figure would break the record of 123 thousand person-trips in 2014.

Chinese spent US$258 billion in outbound travel

eBay is well-known in China as a platform for exporters seeking to sell Chinese-manufactured goods abroad, but it’s easy to overlook the fact that it has another “hidden” role as an importer.

On one hand, eBay’s main website is still an important shopping platform for Chinese seeking to buy goods from abroad. On the other, it also attempts to import goods into China through other channels; for instance, in 2015 it launched a “Featured on eBay Abroad” channel on JD Global, and a third-party service provider maintained a WeChat shop called “Featured on eBay” until it was closed in 2015.

It also operates a low-profile China platform for its main e-commerce site under the domain name “haitao.ebay.com”, catering to shoppers looking to access goods from abroad.

In recent days, though, it seems that eBay intends to bulk up its importing business in China; next year, it plans to begin looking for merchants. Devin Wenig also announced progress on eBay’s China platform on November 20^th, saying that eBay had introduced local payment methods to the site.

Wenig’s announcement seems to point to a redesigned website rather than announcing a new strategy, though the latter may come as well. If you open the new eBay platform, you’ll find a redesigned layout, a mobile site, and other user-friendly aids such as one-click translation and acceptance of UnionPay. What’s still missing, though, is a mobile app.

The products on this site are still connected directly with eBay’s various national platforms, mainly from American-based sellers, including Chinese and HK residents who set up stores in the US with eBay, and relies on overseas direct mail to ship goods, unlike eBay’s American platform, where Chinese buyers can transship.

eBay isn’t a stranger to China’s import market, having launched an overseas purchase platform in 2010 to help Chinese consumers buy abroad, but after giving up on the initiative in 2012 it is rarely remembered. To say it was too forward-looking is not an excuse, but the fact remains that at the time cross-border e-commerce in China was in its infancy, at least when it came to imports.

According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce, cross-border e-commerce transactions (import and export) totaled 3.1 trillion yuan (US$469.7 billion) in 2013; in 2016, that number had risen to 6.5 trillion yuan (US$984.8 billion). In Q2 2017, cross-border e-commerce imports totaled 93.82 billion yuan (US$14.21), a 17.6% rise over the previous month.

Giants such as Alibaba, JD.com, Netease Kaola, and Amazon have all entered the market one after another, followed in the 2014-15 period by many start-ups… at which point eBay was still focusing on exporters. It seems to have been involved in the import market, but not enough; the competition of the past few years has left it a late entrant, with little time to make up ground and pass its competitors. It isn’t clear how it can arrange its business in China to overtake them.

High-end retail should focus on high-value-added goods and services in China

RMB credit balance totaled 93.6 trillion yuan in 2015 with an increase of 14.9% YoY according to iResearch. Consumption credit market in China is expected to exceed 41 trillion yuan in 2019.

Mortgage remains dominant component of China’s credit market, followed by credit card and car loans.

Internet loans market exceeded 800 billion yuan in China in 2015 with an increas of 248.2% from 2014. iResearch forecasts it’s going to exceed 9 trillion yuan in 2018.

Related: China Online Payment Overview for Q2 2016

China online gaming market reached RMB 41.6 billion (US$6.24 billion) in Q2 2016, an increase of 24.2% YoY or 0.9% QoQ.

China mobile gaming market reached RMB 24.4 billion (US$3.66 bn) in Q2 2016, an increase of 120.3% YoY or 15.5% QoQ. Mobile accounted for 58.7% of China’s total online gaming market in Q2 2016.

The number of China’s newborn babies keeps a steady growth in recent years and is estimated to reach 18.08 million by 2018 according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

In 2012, China’s mother & baby care market had a transaction value of RMB 1.402 billion (USD 210 million) with a growth rate of 17.3%; and, it is estimated to reach 3.107 billion yuan (USD 465 million) by 2018 according to Analysys.

Babytree ranks the first place among top 10 mother & baby applications in China by the number of active users, followed by Beibei and Baobaozhidao.

China’s mother & baby communities’ user penetration rate has been increasing as of Q2 2015, which was 1.72%, and reached 2.87% in Q1 2016.

80.7% female users make up China’s mobile mother & baby care market.

Near 60% of mobile mother & baby care market was made up of 25 to 30 years old users.

The growth rate of China’s mother & baby care online retail value reached the peak with 81.1% in 2014; meanwhile, the transaction value was 156.8 billion yuan (USD 23.49 billion); and, it is estimated to reach 494.6 billion yuan (USD 74.10 billion) by 2018 with a growth rate of 26.1%.

The big demand for mother & baby care products drives China to be the second largest country of mother & baby care market, next to the United States.

China has 450 million mobile devices; and, 7,350 Chinese companies have developed over 33,000 mobile apps. China mobile usage has increased by 23% from 2014 to 2015, accounting for near 10% of the global.

Photography is the most popular apps category with a growth rate of 267% year-on-year, followed by health & fitness (128%), travel (105%) and lifestyle & shopping (103%) according to Flurry Analytics. Although the growth rate of  game applications is -18%, it is still the strong force of

Although the growth rate of  gaming apps is -18%, it is still the strong force in China’s mobile market. Niko Partners reports that mobile games now account for nearly 40% of the country’s total digital games revenue.

Phablets increases from 31% in Aug 2015 to 41% in Mar 2016, and it is estimated to over 50% by the end of 2016.

Also read: China’s mobile market analysis in Q2 2015

Momo, one of the top mobile social networking apps in China and gone public in 2014, had monthly active users of 72.3 million in Q1 2016 from 78.1 mn in Q1 2015. However, its net revenues increased by 93% year over year to $50.9 million. Momo mobile marketing revenue continued its strong momentum, growing more than 100% year over year.

Joining the live broadcasting trend of many Chinese internet companies, momo launched this business late last year. It further opened up the service to allow every individual user to broadcast live anytime, anywhere with his or her mobile device or PC.

In April 2016, Momo introduced a major update, where live broadcasting is featured as a separate tab on its mobile app, and launched a standalone application called ‘Hani’ for live broadcasting business to grow more independently.

Also read: China Social Media Users Insights in 2015

With the development of mobile internet and smartphones, users’ spending habits tend to transform to the mobile end. Companies utilized WeChat official accounts to promote products and brand. Most countries hope to reach potential consumers through WeChat OA according to WEMCB research.

China smartphone users were 519 million in 2014 accounting for about 30% of global smartphone users. The number is expected to climb to 574 million in 2015 and maintain a steady growth in the following three years.

The number of WeChat monthly active users reached 650 million as of Q3 2015. 93% citizens in tier-1 cities use WeChat where the market tend to saturate. However, WeChat users in tier-2 and tier-3 cities are expected to increase largely in the following several years.

Traditional adverting methods such as TV, newspaper and magazine are gradually replaced by new advertising methods. The growth rate of traditional media advertising has been declining and it dropped to -1.7% in 2014. However, online advertising market especially mobile advertising has maintained a strong momentum.

Social networks achieve further development in 2015. Weibo and Momo were listed early 2015 and a total number of social apps were more than 2,000 as of Q1 2015.

Among the top 5 most active social apps in May 2015, WeChat, QQ, and Momo are instant messaging apps. With users of 650 million, WeChat is the most active social app in China in 2015.

Due to large information flow and high active rate, social messaging apps attract more advertising input from advertisers in China in 2015, followed by video apps and e-commerce apps.

WeChat official accounts have exceeded 10 million in 2015 covering 400 million active users and linking companies and consumers together on the open platform. 29% WeChat OA users follow we media, 25% follow authorized media, 19% follow companies and merchants and 6% follow marketing accounts in 2015.

53% companies have invested in WeChat OA for advertising and marketing and 2% have put over 500,000 yuan on the platform. Through funds in OA, companies hope to reach potential consumers and publish product news. 45.3% companies project to transform to O2O through OA.

Among companies who have utilized WeChat OA for marketing, 20.5% have used for one year to two years. 45.2% companies have used WeChat OA for less than half year which means more companies promote through OA this year.

Companies have utilized related services to better serve for their projects. 73.1% companies open basic functions of WeChat official accounts such as official websites, H5 and customer service; 62.0% utilize active plug-ins to interact with consumers; 38.9% employ e-commerce related services such as coupons, group buying, catering, Q2Q and mobile payment; 18.9% exploit WeChat hardware such as iBeacon and Wi-Fi.

WeChat OA users mainly hope to get news and ease daily life through utilizing OA. Some 14% even want to get useful knowledge from OA. Considering for users habit, 9am to 11am and 6pm to 10pm are peak time for marketers to publish posts.

67% WeChat users shop on average of at least one good on WeChat in each month higher than 36% of Facebook. 45.6% WeChat official accounts are cosmetics in H1 2015 which means cosmetic brands pay more attention to WeChat marketing. 21.4% are food brands with 11.1 percentage points lower compared with the same period last year.

WeChat satisfies consumer demands including social communication, entertainment, O2O, news, e-commerce, finance, lifestyle and a series of services. WeChat increased City urban heat map service and friend-shared coupons and daily active users surged to 64% from 49% this year.

The penetration rate of WeChat is 76.9% in China in 2015 with the active rate of 64.4%. 55.2% WeChat users open over 10 times on average each day and use more than 10 minutes in total. 62.7% users have more than 50 friends. WeChat promote as high as 11 billion yuan consumption according to WEMCB.

Also read: The Value of WeChat Official Accounts

Overseas new users increased rapidly on Alibaba.com in 2015, particularly in Europe, America, and the Middle East. Domestic merchants on 1688.com spent much time online and CXT users spent 47 hours on average in receiving their first orders in 2015 according to Alibaba. Alibaba is predicted to keep growth in sales and users in 2016.

China e-commerce market reached 15 trillion yuan (US$2.3 trillion) in 2015 and 69% came from the B2B market. The ratio was four percentage points lower compared with 2014. As one of the leading global and domestic B2B platform, Alibaba delivered a good answer in 2015.

Alibaba.com had 1 million domestic suppliers and 250 thousand overseas suppliers. Among the 110 million buyers, over 100 million were overseas. Europe, North America, Central and North America had most buyers of Alibaba’s global B2B platform.

Alibaba.com which was the leading platform for global trade received most inquiries from America, UK, and India in 2015. America was the most important business partner of Alibaba.com in 2015.

Alibaba.com’ business developed quickly in Russia, US, and Brazil in 2015. The three countries gained most new users in the last year. Broadening e-business market and improving delivery service drove the growth.

New users in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia increased most quickly in 2015. New users in Europe increased by 104%, the ratio was 63% in Central and South America, 50% in Middle East, 47% in North America, and 36% in Asia. Asia and North America were the engines of Alibaba Global website’s business.

Middle East was a new emerging market of Alibaba.com in 2015. New users in Turkey, Ukraine, and Pakistan increased quickly which were the driving force of Alibaba’s business in the Middle East regions.

More users were used to shop through smartphones and tablets. China m-commerce retail market was predicted to reach US$334.0 billion in 2015. About 40% overseas users purchased on Alibaba.com through mobile devices in 2015.

1688.com, Alibaba’s domestic B2B platform, aimed to help small and medium companies do business in China. China’s small and medium corporate buyers shopped more frequently on 1688.com in 2015.

China online buyers shopped more online instead of offline shops in 2015 and over 20% were newly created demands. The number of goods shoppers bought online increased largely in 2015.

China’s online shoppers tended to pay more attention to quality rather than price and customized or processed products encountered larger demands in 2015. Users were more willing to spend money on middle and high end goods with kitchen wares as example. Price was not the only factor to attract China’s online shoppers and companies should manage to deliver quality products to the market to gain competitiveness.

More 1688.com users finished their initial order through mobile devices in China. Online shopping platforms were and should be devoted to supply better mobile user experience to improve sales.

1688.com promoted CXT service to help small and medium companies have more exposures by utilizing special marketing tools. 54.9% CXT members logged in for over eight hours every day in 2015. The ratio was 18.9 percentage points higher than 2014.

CXT users spent 47 hours on average in receiving their first order in 2015 which was less than half of 2014. New merchants could also have many opportunities on the platform.

China central and western suppliers increased quickly on 1688.com. Tier-2 and below cities and rural regions were strategically important region for 168.com and Alibaba. Alibaba has invested in domestic delivery service in less developed cities and promoted China Spring Festival Shopping Fair to boost B2B business in rural regions.

Alibaba reported revenues of 22,171 million yuan (US$3,488 million) in Q3 2015, 20,245 million yuan (US$3,265 million) in Q2 2015, and 17,425 million yuan (US$2,811 million) in Q1 2105. With exploring overseas market and domestic rural market, Alibaba is predicted to keep promising in 2016.

Also read: China Online Luxury Shoppers Insights in 2015

China’s job hunting websites reached almost 450 million monthly internet users and the number of monthly visits totaled 3 billion in Q3 2015 according to iResearch.

51job.com (hereinafter called 51job) and Zhaopin.com (hereinafter called Zhaopin) were major job hunting companies in China. Total revenues of 51job was 520 million yuan (US$80.27 million) and total revenues of Zhaopin were 350 million yuan (US$54.02 million) in Q3 2015. Influenced by the autumn busy season of job hunting, operating revenues of both companies increased slightly.

Online job hunting revenues made up about 60% of 51job revenues in Q3 2015. HR and related revenues made up about 35%. Compared with Zhaopin, 51job was relatively concentrated in revenue pattern while also more reasonable given that non-online job hunting revenues.

Revenues except online websites of Zhaopin only accounted for about 10% in Q3 2015 including campus recruitment, career assessment and HR related revenues. The ratio was much lower compared with 34.9% of 51job.

The size of China’s online employment market was stable in the past 12 months. The number of monthly coverage users reached nearly 450 million from July to September this year with a slight down in QoQ rate and YoY rate. The downturn mainly resulted from rising mobile app users.

Monthly visits of China’s employment websites remained steady across the year and the peak appeared in March 2015. Post-Chinese New Year is often a period when many employees looked for new opportunities in China. A report from 58.com said as high as 65% staff in China would change job after the Chinese New Year because of no year-end bonus.

Zhaopin has surpassed 51job in online monthly reached users since May 2015. Monthly reached users of online websites of Zhaopin were 520,000 more than 51job. The soaring number of app users was mainly driven from superior user experience on Zhaopin’s mobile app.

Major employment websites maintained stable in terms of monthly reached users on mobile apps in Q3 2015. 51job maintained a total number of monthly coverage users about 2.6 million since May 2015. Zhaopin has been steadily growing in monthly users this year.

The gap in daily reached users had gradually widened between 51job and Zhaopin mobile apps in Q3 2015. Daily reached users of 51job declined slightly in September while the total increased in Q3 2015. Daily coverage users of Zhaopin declined in Q3 while still maintained a slight growth compared with Q2 2015.

51job spent 79.9% advertising spends of nearly 700,000 yuan on Weibo and other portal websites in Q3 2015. The ratio was 2.4 percentage points higher compared with the previous quarter.

Zhaopin invested far more spends in advertising than 51job in Q3 2015. 65.9% advertising spends were made available for real estate websites with 38.6 percentage points high compared to Q2 in Q3 2015. 28.6% advertising spends were in portal websites while might be supposed that Zhaopin wouldn’t want to have direct conflicts on portal websites. Advertising channels of Zhaopin were more diverse compared with 51job.

Looking for jobs through job hunting websites has become an avoidable trend. Compared to traditional job fairs, online employment websites are more efficient and less costly. Especially for university graduates, blindly sending resumes always had no effect.

Also read: China’s Talents in Internet Industry 2015

Year 2015 is almost over; let’s recall some of the top keywords for China internet that got so much attention in the world: outbound tourism, cross-border online shopping, mobile, WeChat, Tmall…

Here are the most popular CIW articles in 2015:

1. Baidu, Sogou among Top 5 Biggest Search Engines in the World. eMarketer estimated that in 2015, the total spend of digital advertising in the world will exceed US$170.85 billion according to its report released on 31 March 2015. Baidu and Sohu ranked the second and fourth respectively in the top 5 biggest search engines by revenue in 2014.

Also read: China Search Engine Market Share, and China’s Mobile Search Market

2. China E-commerce Market Overview. In Q1 2015, the total transaction value of China e-commerce market exceeded RMB3.48 trillion (USD$567.49 billion) with an increase of 10.1% YoY and 23.8% QoQ. In accordance with China B2B market and online shopping market in Q1 2015, e-commerce market had slowed its YoY growth. Besides, it is now evolving into a new stage.

• China Online Cosmetics Market Overview
• China Online Shopping Accounted for over 10% of Total Retail
• 10 Charts to Tell You Almost Everything About Alibaba Group
• Stats of Top Selling Brands on Taobao/Tmall in 18 Categories in Sep 2014
• How Japanese AV Idol Sora Aoi Sells on China Social Media
• China Top 100 E-Commerce Companies in Q3 2015

3. Wechat Launched Wechat Contacts App Offering Free Calls.  Wechat released a Wechat Contacts app as an enhancement to smartphones’ existing contacts.

• How Wechat Users Search For Public Accounts
• China Social Media Users Insights in 2015
• WeChat, Weibo or Alipay? Who Won Hongbao War in 2015?
• WeChat & Weibo Users Most Active Social Shoppers in the World
• Wechat 5.0 Public Account Operation Guide
• 20 Charts on WeChat Shopping Market
• How WeChat Drives Viral Marketing of Local Specialities
• The Value of WeChat Official Accounts
• WeChat to Launch Themed Campaign on China Children’s Day
• WeChat Daily Active Users Reached 570 Mln in Sep 2015

3.  China B2B E-commerce Market in Q1 2015. China B2B e-commerce market reached RMB 5.48 billion (USD 883 million) in Q1 2015, an decrease of 1.6% QoQ according to Analysis International.

4. China Female Online Shopper Insights 2015. Shoes and bags accounted for 27.3% of all the categories of online products, being the best selling product category. Cosmetics ranked the third, which showed female online shopping is booming in China.

5. China Mobile Social Networking Users to Reach 335.9 Mln in 2015. The number will continue grow and by 2019, users will exceed 480.4 million, representing 34.8% of total population.

6. 80% China’s Mobile Users Rooted Smartphones in 2014 Compared with traditional channels to download ROM, ROM official website is more resourceful and categorized. 36.4% respondents would like to download on official websites in 2014. However, there were fewer smartphone users downloading ROM from online communities.

• The Secrets Of Xiaomi Marketing Success in China
• China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015
• 70% App Downloads From Mobile App Stores in China
• China Mobile Internet Insights in H1 2015

7.  Rise of the China Outbound Tourism. China outbound tourists on average spent RMB 20,000 (US$3,252) during travel per person and shopping is an important part of their spend in oversea trips (57.8%).

• China Tourists Travel Intention Study 2015
• Chinese Luxury Traveler Insights 2015
• China, the Largest Outbound Tourism Market in 3 Consecutive years
• China to Be the Largest Business Travel Market Worldwide in 2016
• China Online Accommodation Booking Market in Q3 2015
• China Online Travel Market Overview in Q3 2015

Last but not least, we wish you a Happy New Year with the hope that you will have many blessings in the year to come!

China’s online video market reached 11.53 billion yuan (US$1.90 billion) with a growth of 31.9% QoQ and 62.7% YoY in the third quarter of 2015 according to iResearch. Online video advertising accounted for 56.3% of the total online video revenues, among which 39.9% of 2.59 billion yuan (US$0.40 billion) were from mobile.

China’s online video market maintained a high growth rate in the third quarter of 2015 although the GDP slowed down. 56.3% China’s online video revenues came from the online advertising for 6.49 billion yuan (US$1.01 billion), 8.4 percentage points lower than the ratio of Q2 2015. Although online video advertising remained a dominant revenue source, non-advertising sources such as video value-added service revenues and others increased slightly.

Copyright distribution declined in the third quarter of 2015 compared to the previous quarter this year while video value-added service revenues increased slightly. Online video companies should make deeper research on users’ preference and make the video products more catered to consumers to improve non-advertising revenues.

China’s online video advertising market in Q3 2015 increased by 14.8% compared to the previous quarter this year and 56.1% compared to the same period last year. Overall, China online video advertising market has entered a stable growth period thus online video companies should provide a richer and more accurate video marketing services for advertisers to maintain a high growth rate.

2.59 billion yuan (US$0.40 billion) video advertising revenues were from mobile, accounting for 39.9% of the overall online advertising market and 22.5% of the overall online video market. The mobile video advertising market only made up 24.2% in the third quarter of 2014 and 35.4% in the second quarter of 2015. With further development of mobile internet and mobile services, video advertising on the mobile terminal will maintain a steady growth.

Also read: China Online Advertising Insights 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

Mobile payment has penetrated into every part of daily life in China such as online shopping, taking a taxi, supermarkets and food delivery in particular. About 70% Chinese internet users have ordered foods in a month and about 70% would pay on mobile according to DCCI. Alipay, WeChat Payment and Baidu Wallet have become the payment apps with the highest usage frequency.

45.8% of female internet users and 47.5% of male users ordered foods in 2014 in China according to iResearch, and more Chinese will use the food delivery service with the ever-improving food delivery market in the future.

Only 26.9% would rather pay cash on delivery and 73.1% users will pay online, among which 91.7% tend to pay on smartphones and 8.3% on the PC end. Alipay, WeChat Payment, and Baidu Wallet lead the mobile payment market becoming most frequently used mobile payment instruments.

Daily active users of WeChat totaled 570 million in China in September 2015 according to Tencent, and WeChat payment users are expected to increase by 7% in the next few months. Baidu Wallet is also promising by connecting with large profitable activities and various services with Baidu such as Baidu Library and Baidu Post Bar. However, Alipay may not attract more users considering its high penetration rate.

Alipay is convenient and simple to operate while Baidu Wallet is more secure and preferential. White-collars prefer Baidu Wallet, and second-tier city Chinese users like Baidu Wallet and Alipay better.

Chinese use mobile payment an average of 2 to 4 times a week that mobile payment has become the most commonly used method except bank cards and cash. DCCI report shows that in 2017, Chinese mobile payment users will be expected to be close to 400 million, representing an increase of about 80% compared with the previous year.

China’s food delivery market achieved over 160 billion yuan (US$25.11 billion), accounting for by 5.8% of the overall catering market, and this proportion will be expected to increase to 9% of over 300 billion yuan (US$49.09) in 2017.

Also read: China Offline Mobile Payment Insights in 2015

Women are born to love shopping. However, more male shoppers shop online than the female in China according to research data from Nielsen.

China’s online shopping male consumers account for 55% and female 45% in 2015. Over 79% consumers are highly educated; undergraduates, graduates, and even masters. China online shoppers with monthly incomes of no less than 8,000 yuan accounted for 81% of the total.

China’s e-commerce market totaled 13.369 trillion yuan (US$2.107 trillion) in 2014 and was expected to increase by 42.1% to US$672.01 billion in 2015 estimated by eMarketer. By the end of 2015, China’s e-commerce retail sales are expected to make up over 40% of global e-commerce retail sales.

Pursuant to rapid penetration of internet and smartphones, China’s online shoppers increased to 557 million in 2014, mobile shopping users 361 billion and online payment users 304 million. By 2020, China’s internet users are expected to reach 80% of the total population and 70% of them would shop online.

Online shopping users in rural areas grew by 40.6% in China and the urban by only 16.9% in 2014. However, online shopping usage rate in rural areas is still as low as 43.2%, compared to 60.4% in urban areas.

Online travel market has the largest transaction in China e-commerce market, followed by digital products market. Mothercare products are bought most frequent online by parents. 68% of online shoppers would search for goods online during weekends; 55% of users may add products to their shopping carts after dinner. The average family number of shoppers is 3.2 persons and over 60% of users are married.

Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province and headquarter of Alibaba, hosts over one-third of China’s e-commerce websites. By the end of 2015, Hangzhou is expected to generate 100 billion service revenues and create 600,000 jobs for China.

Small and less-developed cities and rural areas are regarded as new growth opportunities by many e-commerce companies. For example, Alibaba has invested 10 billion yuan (US$15.76 billion) targeting rural areas.

Also read: China E-commerce Market to Reach US$3.8 Trillion in 2018

Chinese mothers spend one-third of their online time on shopping in 2015 according to CTR Market Research. In comparison, Chinese moms’ time on social media is only one third as much as on Online.

About 85.7% mothers in China buy baby’s products online. The majority of them received high education with high income so that they could get relatively high quality goods by shopping online, especially shopping overseas goods. About 91.3% mothers buy baby’s products offline.

Expenditure mothers spend offline shopping (55.7%) is not much more than online (44.3%). In China, over 16 million infants are born every year and the number of infants aged 0 to 3 years is more than 70 million. Chinese mothercare products market has a huge potential and bright future considering the Chinese government has just allowed two children for each family.

63.1% Chinese internet users will shop online this year, which is more than 400 million people estimated by eMarketer. By 2020, the number of Chinese internet users is expected to reach 80% of the total population, and 70% of them would shop online.

Transaction value of China’s mothercare products on the online shopping platforms reached 190.24 billion yuan (US$29.67 billion) in the first half of 2015, and more male shoppers bought mothercare products than female since 2014.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping Turnover Surpassed PC in Q2 2015

China’s personal care online shopping market included goods as oral hygiene products, hair care products, body care products, facial cleaning products, cosmetics, perfumes, etc. Transaction values of China’s personal care online shopping market was 206.88 billion yuan (US$32.60 billion) in H1 2015.

C2C sales accounted for 75.3% which still pioneered e-commerce models. Various subdivisions of personal care products and advantage in price gradually attracted more offline personal care consumers shopping online.

Tmall and Jingdong respectively accounted for 48.4% and 21.8% of B2C personal care online shopping market. As the largest domestic B2C platform, Tmall could attract more consumers with overwhelming advantages; Jingdong, the fourth largest internet company in China which was only next to Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, gained returns after category expansion strategy and large advertising placement.

With the rapid development of China’s economy and rising living standards, China has become one of the world’s largest personal care market. Relying on the huge internet population and improving consciousness of health, personal care online shopping market would have better development opportunities.

Also read: China’s Mobile Market Analysis in Q2 2015

China’s mobile internet users reached 657 million and smartphone users 601 million in Q2 2015 according to iiMedia. Smartphone penetration in China is expected to reach 38.6% by the end of 2015 and mobile apps is becoming an important part of Chinese life.

Nearly 58.7% of the Chinese Android smartphone users downloaded apps from third-party app stores. Other important download channels are app stores of smartphone vendors, app stores of system operating vendors and app stores of operating vendors. Only a small amount of users will download apps from websites. Users of iOS usually download from App Stores.

Active users of third-party mobile app stores in Q2 2015 increased to 428 million, with growth of 1.9% compared with the previous quarter. Users of third-party app stores kept a steady growth momentum although the growth rate slows down.

360 Mobile Guard ranks first in terms of total number of active users, followed by Myapp and Baidu Mobile Assistant. Xiaomi app store is also popular, especially among MIUI and Xiaomi users. Stores with high profile, variety of apps and security insurance are key factors to attract more users.

In terms of popularity of various types of mobile apps in China, the Chinese smartphone users prefer instant messaging and social communication apps, followed by news apps and music apps.

App update frequency by developers could reflect the number of active users and the competitiveness. About 14.3% apps are updated once longer than six months which means users aren’t a lot and may not be further maintained.

Tencent News, TouTiao, Netease News and Sohu News are major channels for Chinese to get news information. The post-90s, post-80s and post-70s are the majority of mobile app readers.

By Q2 2015, China’s music apps users reached 423 million with a growth rate of 2.7%. Kugou Music and QQ music win in music apps market with their high publicity and large song lists. Music apps are not used as frequently as news apps.

Taxi-calling apps are the most frequently used amongall car-calling apps for the lower cost. Users who prefer to get a better experience are more likely to use carpooling apps. The average fare of 78.2% taxi trips is less than 50 yuan (US$7.85) while only 24.9% of carpooling is less than 50 yuan. About 36.8% of carpooling costs is between 50 yuan to 100 yuan (US$15.70).

China mobile video app market is basically the same with the online market. Active users of music apps reachED 368 million with a growth rate of 3.1%. A matured online video market of Youku, iQIYI, Tencent Video, PPTV and Sohu Video has been established. Other apps in total accounted for only 18.1% of market share.

China’s mobile gaming users reached 10.85 billion yuan in Q2 2015, with 491 million users. Mobile apps couldn’t process too much storage and a majority of existing apps are puzzle games.

China’s app market still has a large room for development. At present, advertising and value-added services are the two most important profit channels for developers. However, the average usage period of apps is only ten months and about 85% apps are uninstalled within a month, especially social communication apps, which makes it hard for developers to gain profits. Developers should avoid invasion of users’ privacy and improve performance to attract more users.

Also read: China’s Mobile Search Market Insights in Q3 2015

China’s e-commerce retail sales are expected to increase by 42.1% to US$672.01 billion, accounting for over 40% of the global e-commerce retail sales in 2015 estimated by eMarketer. The e-commerce market in 2018 is expected to reach US$1.57 trillion according to eMarketer. China has become the world’s largest e-commerce market.

With the development of mobile networks, mobile commerce market is booming in China. Although smartphone market in China is saturating, the smartphone penetration is expected to reach 38.6% this year.

Mobile commerce in 2015 is predicted to reach US$333.99 billion, making up about half of China’s total retail e-commerce sales. Retail e-commerce in 2015 accounts for only 15.9% of the total retail sales; and mobile 7.9%.

Rural netizens are major future consumers for e-commerce companies. To achieve long and continuous growth, companies have to seize opportunities to attract rural shoppers. Alibaba, the largest internet company in the world, is to invest 1 billion yuan (US$0.16 billion) in the logistics and delivery services to better serve rural shoppers in the coming Double 11 shopping festival. In addition, Chinese cross-border e-commerce is also growing fast.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping Turnover Surpassed PC in Q2 2015

China’s domestic travel frequency has been gradually increasing based on Qunar’s data from January to September 2015.

Travelers under  21 years old account for 14.25% of the total, and most of them are accompanied by their parents during travel. The post-90s is the main driving force of China tourism market, accounting for 39.97% of the total online travel booking users. Consumers aged between 31 and 35 y-o account for the smallest percentage of total travelers. Travelers over the age of 36 get stabilized recovery.

Lovers and couples like traveling most, accounting for 44.66%, followed by the whole family trips and individual trip. The ratio of individual travelers is increasing.

With the improvement of economic development and income level, travel is becoming an important need in people’s living in China. Self-driving trips, budget travel, backpack travel and others are rapidly included in the territory of modern Chinese ways to travel. While most consumers travel as a planned trip, their advanced bookings are made in a relatively short period. 46.21% travelers make bookings 5 days in advance. Only 8.3% travelers may make bookings more than 30 days before the trip.

Mid- and low-end hotels are major preference of consumers. As high as 43.25% will book hotels under 300 yuan, and only 12.67% over 800 yuan.  Due to the popularization of Qunar, Ctrip, and other online hotel booking websites, more high-end hotel prices get deep discounts.

Among 32 capital cities in China, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou received most online bookings. Lhasa, Hohhot, Yinchuan and other midwestern residents rank at the bottom, who travel less.

Dali, Kunming, Lijiang, Xishuangbanna, Hong Kong, Jiuzhaigou, Sanya, and Beijing are top 8 inbound destinations; Bangkok, Pattaya, Krabi, Phuket, Bali Jeju and Seoul are top 7 Southeast Asian destinations. Citizens in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Sanya, Chongqing and Xi’an are most willing to spend money on accommodation during tourism in order to enjoy a more comfortable travel.

Also reads: China to invest $278.7 Billion in Tourism in 2025

About 64,000 mainland Chinese travelers went to UK in the second quarter of 2015, according to the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom.

UK has made much effort to attract Chinese tourists and Chinese tourists to Britain grew by 33% YoY in Q2 2015. However, although RMB appreciated against GBP, Chinese tourists spending in UK fell by 6% to 151 million pounds (about 1.48 billion yuan).

Chinese outbound visitors are expected to exceed more than 120 million this year. The top five outbound destinations for Chinese tourists all are Asian countries and regions. France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany are among the top ten travel destinations for Chinese.

UK received 7.4 million tourists from mainland Europe in Q2 2015, 1 million from the United States and 152,000 from India.

Also read: China Hotel Search Behavior Overview 2015

Xiaomi app store saw 20 billion app downloads in H1 2015, and the highest app downloads in a single day was more than 85 million, which took the leading position among China’s app stores.

App download in Xiaomi app store totaled 20 billion in H1 2015, nearly three times more than the same period last year. In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China’s market.

Apart from faithful Xiaomi and MIUI users, one main secret of Xiaomi app store was its ever improving apps. In this half, newly uploaded apps covers education, shopping, video and music, health care, tools, lifestyle, entertainment, news, reading, social communication, sports, financing and others.

Downloads of apps reflected vertical markets. In the car calling market, Kuaidi and Didi shared the market in H1 2014. After merging, Kuaidi and Didi totaled 81% of the market, followed by Uber China (18%). Uber formally entered China in Feb 2014, however, policies and different situation made it unharmonious with the Chinese market.

Food delivery app market was shared in H1 2014 by Ele (35%), Meituan (34%) and Taodiandian (26%). In 2015, a new force rose: food-delivery app of Baidu, Baidu Waimai with 12%. As competitors between Alibaba and Baidu, Taodiandian lost 20% of downloads in half a year. Meituan merged with Dianping in Oct 2015; a market dominating player remains unclear.

App downloads were also influenced by holidays and events such as June 18^th which is the ten years founding anniversary of Jingdong; thus many goods were on large discounts. On June 18^th, downloads of Jingdong increased sharply which was nearly 2.5 times more than the total downloads before June 18^th this year.

MIUI 7 was released on August 13, and the new version of Xiaomi app store would be put into use. Google Play recently announced downloads of 500 million while Apple App Store reached 25 billion.

Also read: China Online Shopping Insights in 2014

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 users’ time spent on digital media has exceeded that on traditional media in 2015. Digital media is the largest media by ad revenue; online ad revenue will continue to grow, especially mobile ad revenues.

According to eMarketer, China internet users on average spend over 6 hours 8 minutes on media per day, of which over 3 hours on social media, 2 hours 40 minutes on TV, 11 minutes on  radio, 10 minutes on newspaper, and only 1 minute on magazine. 94.8% users over 18 years old watch television while spending less time is spent. 46% users use the internet (PC), 43.1% use smartphones, and 42% use feature phones.

The compound average growth rate (CAGA) of print media (newspaper and magazine) from 2011 to 2015 is -7.4%. The CAGA of newspaper is -5.1% and the CAGA of magazine is -7.4%. A report from Kantar shows the number of social media users in urban aras grow quickly from 28.6% in 2013 to 34% in 2014, which indicates that social media gradually become mainstream.

Diversification is one of the most obvious features of China social media, the post-90s are the largest group whose average age in 2014 is 30.4 years old; the average age in 2013 is 28.8 years old, which indicates that more different age-groups begin to use social media.

The number of users in the second, third and fourth-tier cities has increased while the number of users in first-tier cities has declined. The ratio of high education users dropped.

Chinese users prefer to use mobile internet for social media. Most people like using WeChat and Weibo on mobile apps while browsing BBS on computers. And different age level users have different internet behaviors. The post-90s often watch videos, the post-90s often shop online, and the post-70s often read news on the website.

In 2013, China internet users use Qzone most frequently while in 2014 WeChat became one of the most frequent-used mobile apps in China. More original content were generated on WeChat Weibo for the first time in 2014, and the engagement on WeChat was higher.

Chinese users who only read information on social media tend to be more according to data of Chinamedia 360. In 2014, 46% social media users didn’t participate in topic discussion or leave comments compared with 39% in 2013. A majority of users expected to get instant and practical information from social media; and users were more concious of privacies. Thus interactivities turn to be less.

Let’s take Wechat and Weibo as examples.

The average age of WeChat users is 26 years old, 97.7% users are under 50 years old. Most of WeChat users are employees, freelances, students and staff in state-owned enterprises.

WeChat has become an important part of Chinese life. 25% users on average open WeChat over 30 times per day, and 52.2% users over 10 times. About half of WeChat users have over 100 WeChat friends, 62.7% users have over 50 WeChat friends.

WeChat official account is one of the major features of WeChat. About 80% users would follow official accounts, especially accounts of companies and media. 29.1% official account users follow WeMedia accounts, 25.4% follow verified media accounts, 18.9% follow companies, 5.9% follow marketing accounts, and other 20.7% don’t follow any account. Over 40% users want to get information from official accounts.

Official subscription accounts can be categorized in entertainment, health, news, beauty and fashion by content. 42% accounts would interact with fans. Entertainment accounts are most welcome.

Combined MAU of Weixin (Chinese version of Wechat) and WeChat were 600 million as of 30 Jun 2015. Weibo MAUs reached 212 million in Q2 2015. 72% are 19 to 35 years old, the post-80s and post-90s are major parts of Weibo users. Male users made up of 60.9%, and female of 39.1%. Users in South China and East China are more active on Weibo than users in other parts of China.

Also read: WeChat Offers 8 Solutions For Smart Devices

In Q2 2015, China’s online shopping market reached 872.54 billion yuan (US$136.77 billion), with a high level increase of 39.6%, which accounted for 12.3% of total retail value compared with 10% in 2014.

The transaction value of mobile shopping market exceeded 443.45 billion yuan (US$69.51 billion), an increase of 133.5% far higher than the overall growth of the online shopping market, which has become the main driving force for the rapid development of online shopping market in China.

The transaction value of B2C market reached 442.13 billion yuan (US$69.31 billion) in Q2 2015, accounting for 50.7% of the overall online shopping value, 6.2 percentage points higher compared with Q2 2014. B2C market has been growing rapidly, this quarter China’s B2C online shopping market grew by 59.1%, much higher than C2C (24%). B2C has exceeded C2C to become the mainstream of China’s online shopping market.

From the use of different internet access devices, mobile shopping transaction value surpassed the PC-end turnover for the first time accounting for 50.8% of China’s online shopping market, an increase of 20 percentage points compared with the same period last year. In the future, mobile-end shopping would become major driving force of online shopping in China.

Tmall accounted for 55.6% of the total B2C online shopping market; Jingdong 25.2%, and the others totalled about 20% in Q2 2015.

Alibaba’s mobile apps, such as Taobao and Tmall, made up 83.7% of China’s mobile shopping market share; Jingdong increased to 6.1%; and Vipshop ranked third with share of 2.5%.

Also read: China’s Mobile Market Analysis in Q2 2015

In recent years, with the penetration of online travel applications and improvement of people’s living standard, more and more people chose to travel on holidays. The total number of outbound and inbound tourists in China increased by 9.8% to 127 million in H1 2015 according to Mafengwo.cn.

Payment Method

Based on the research by Mafengwo, an online travel company, 43.2% of Chinese travelers preferred payment in advance while 56.8% preferred to pay at the hotel reception, considering the possible changes during travel and security problems of electronic payment.

Selection of Hotels

In the first half of 2015, Chinese tourists in general would choose a hotel after browsing 14 hotels at weekdays, more than 11 in 2014; and on weekends they would on average browse 18 hotels before selecting their favorite hotels, more than 13 in 2014. Apart from price and reviews, hotel style and comprehensive condition were core factors that would influence final decisions.

Pre-booking Days

Chinese domestic travelers on average booked hotels 12 days in advance, and booked outbound hotels 42 days before the trips, respectively an increase of 2 days and 5 days compared with 2014. PC users would reserve hotels earlier than uses in mobile end. PC orders would be made with an average of 32 days in advance, and the mobile orders with an average of 15 days in advance.

Refund Rate

72.02% of the hotel reservation cancelation were done by the female users, and only 27.98% by the male users.

Taiwan BnB

BnB (bed and breakfast) was one of the attractions of Taiwan. Taipei, with only 15.95% of total bookings in Taiwan, accounted for 63.96% BnB booking market. To attract more mainland tourists and increase the order of BnB, Taiwan needed to integrate resources further and strengthen the publicity and promotion.

Hot 5 Star Hotel Reservation Cities

In H1 2015, the top three cities that citizens preferred booking 5 star hotels were Hangzhou (a YoY increase of 287.67%), Fuzhou (226.67%), and Kunming (200%).

Hot Online Reservation Cities

Beijing was China’s most developed online hotel reservations city with one out of four booking hotels online. The top five cities that citizens preferred online booking were Beijing (23.96%), Shanghai (20.86%), Guangzhou (14.56%), Nanjing (7.51%), and Hangzhou (6.95%).

Hot 5 Star Hotels

The top 5 star hotels that Chinese tourists favored most were Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, Pai Island Resort and Racha Hotel in Thailand, L’Hotel Nina et Convention Centre in Hongkong, and AYANA Resort and Spa in Indonesia.

Also read: China Travel Market to Reach $617.4B in 2015

Affected by multiple factors, the advertising market in China in H1 2015 was mediocre which did not develop as expected.

The overall advertising market in China in 2013 showed a growing trend, with a significant growth in the first half but slowed growth in the second half. In 2014, the slow growth trend continued. In H1 2015, China advertising market showed a decreasing trend apart from a slight increase in February 2015.

From different media types, magazine and broadcast advertising spends accounted for a relatively stable ratio. Newspaper advertising spends reduced slightly while TV advertising spends rose slightly. Television advertising still held an absolute leading position in the national advertising market.

In H1 2015, the ratio of TV advertising decreased by 4% compared with the same period last year while radio advertising increased by 9% year over year. Influenced by the popularization of online advertising and mobile advertising, spend on print media advertising continued to show negative growth; and newspaper media advertising spends dropped to 26%.

TV advertising market in China in 2013 showed a growing trend, with a significant growth in the first half but slowed growth in the second half. In 2014, the slow growth trend continued. In H1 2015, China TV advertising market showed a decreasing trend apart from a slight increase in February 2015.

In H1 2015, the profit of China regional advertising market continued to grow; but overall revenue of domestic media decreased dramatically, an 10.5% decrease compared to last year.

In the key television media advertising market, Procter & Gamble and Unilever reduced their spend on all levels of television advertising while the Jiangzhong Group, Guangzhou Chenliji Pharmaceutical and Jiangxi Huiren Pharmaceutical kept a substantial increase on TV advertising. The increase of Xi’an Epanggong Pharmaceutical spend on CCTV and local sateliite TV were more than 100%.

In China broadcast media market in H1 2015, the automotive and related products industry maintained rapid growth which led the market. Computers and accessories, media, and business/industrial/ agriculture market grew rapidly compared with the same period last year.

In sub-categories, real estate, fund, investment, wealth management, and funds market grew rapidly; and some third-party and value-added services, entertainment, and retail services advertising grew more than 50% YoY.

Among the top ten advertisers in H1 2015, most of them were in the automotive and related products industry, which still maintained a rapid growth trend. Furthermore, the top advertiser China Mobile lowered the advertising spends. China Telecom also had a certain level of decline in advertising spends, which might be a strategic plan of the companies.

In H1 2015, medicines, F&B, and cosmetics industries continued their growth.

Many advertisers among top ten were from the FMCG industry. After P & G continuing to lower its advertising spend, other FMCG advertisers such as Unilever and L’Oreal also reduced the ad spend. Pharmaceutical industry advertisers increased spends on advertising compared with advertisers in other industries.

Beverage market advertisers continued to increase ad spend; especially in February Chinese New Year with 32% increase.

China’s cosmetics industry advertising market in 2014 overall showed a decreasing trend, and the advertising spends in the first half of 2015 continued to drop.

In pharmaceutical and healthcare products industry, health and fitness equipment, healthy food and beverage advertising market developed rapidly, which continued the growth in H1 2015 from 2014.

In H1 2015, the television media were still an important channel for advertising spend.

In H1 2015, advertising spend of the pharmaceutical industry ranked first in each sub-categories and maintained a relatively rapid growth; and healthy food/beverage and health / fitness facility also had a significant growth YoY. Medicine manufacturer and first-aid medicine with relatively small investment in advertising declined dramatically YoY.

Also read: China Top 10 Online Advertising Media in 2014

The penetration ratio of iOS8 reached 76% in China in Q2 2015; and as of August 2015, only 19.4% subscribers still used the iOS7 system. The popularization of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus promoted the adoption of iOS8, and the free system upgrade feature improved iPhone user base in China. When issued in September 2015, iOS9 might replace iOS8 and gain more market share.

Smartphones with large screens were most welcomed in China. Screens with 1280*920 were best-sellers in the market, as Xiaomi Note, Huawei Glory, iPhone 6Plus.

Smartphones market in China faced a fierce competition in the past several months. Xiaomi and Huawei chased iPhone out of the largest smartphone vendor in China by shipments in Q2 2015, and China’s 360 and Letv released smart handsets, driven by the success of some domestic brands. Samsung, the Korea-based brand, was gradually losing its market share in China.

In Q2 2015, the penetration rate of 4G networks reached 20.1% up of over 200 million, 14.8 percentage points higher compared with Q1 2015.

China Mobile composed of 53.4% of China’s mobile network market share, followed by China Unicom (25.27%) and China Telecom (21.3%). 86.6% of 4G network users accessed to the internet through China Mobile, which maintained prominence and expertise compared with China Telecom and China Unicom (11.31% in total).

Compared with Q2 2014, life service, shopping and health apps increased in a large amount. Took mobile shopping apps as example, overseas shopping, mother care, group buying and etc. apps increased obviously.

Mobile gaming apps also increased in a large amount compared with the same period last year. Leisure and mind gaming apps maintained a growth trend of over 40%, followed by network gaming apps and role play apps.

Guangdong province had 12.75% of mobile gaming users in China, followed by Jiangsu province (6.58%) and Henan province (6.26%). Regions in eastern of southern part of China had more mobile gaming users.

More entrepreneurs devoted themselves to the exploration of mobile internet. Beijing, the capital city of China, had a unique advantage and attracted entrepreneurs with its robust internet atmosphere. Other regions, for example, the Yangtze River Delta, also attracted many internet entrepreneurs.

Men and women had nearly total different preference towards mobile apps. Men preferred apps for entertainment, navigation, social communication, reading and etc. while women preferred shopping, healthy, photography, education apps and etc.

Users above 20 years old preferred to play chess and card games, and 5 to 12 years old were the most likely to play sport and adventure games. Users of 13 to 18 years old comprised of the majority of mobile gaming apps users in each kind of mobile apps.

61% mobile apps were downloaded in leisure time, and 44% of which were mobile gaming apps. In non-leisure time, 39% were downloaded, and 63% of those were non gaming apps.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015

China’s top 4 B2C websites, JD, Jumei, Dangdang and Vipshop announced financial reports in Q2 2015, JD further inproved its business scale while suffering from greater losses. Jingdong lost over 1.8 billion yuan in the past year.

JD in Q2 2015 gained a revenue of 45.9 billion yuan (about US$7.4 billion), an increase of 61% year-over-year, mainly due to the increase of active users and orders; Vipshop totaled a net revenue of 9 billion (US$1.5 billion), 77.6% increase compared with 5.1 billion in the previous year; Jumei got a revenue of 1.963 billion yuan (US$308.1 million), 100% growth compared with US$154.4 million the same period last year; and Dangdang got a revenue of 2.312 billion yuan (US$373 million), a YoY increase of 29.8%, which was the slowest among the four companies.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping Market Value Exceeds RMB36 Bln in Q1 2015

The internet plays a more and more important role in our daily life. Many people devote themselves in the internet industry to strive for better development. According to LinkedIn, over 280,000 talents work in China internet industry.

The average years of experience of China internet talents are 5.87, well below that of other industries. Over 60% talents work in Beijing, Shanghai, Gungzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, these relatively developed cities in China.

Over 40% talents in the internet industry once studied abroad, and about 97% achieved a bachelor degree or higher. Top 10 domestic and oversea universities talents graduated in 2014 are listed below.

Top 10 Domestic Universities

• 1. Beijing University
• 2. Zhejiang University
• 3. Tsinghua University
• 4. Shanghai Jiaotong University
• 5. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication
• 6. Huazhong University of Science and Technology
• 7. Wuhan University
• 8. Fudan University
• 9. Beihang University
• 10. Renmin University of China

Top 10 Overseas Universities

• 1. The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 2. The University of Hong Kong
• 3. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• 4. National University of Singapore
• 5. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• 6. University of California-Berkeley
• 7. Stanford University
• 8. University of Sydney
• 9. University of California, Los Angeles
• 10. City University of Hong Kong

Top 10 Specialties of China’s Internet Talents 

• 1. Computer
• 2. Business Administration
• 3. Language and Literature
• 4. Electrical Engineering
• 5. Communication
• 6. Economy
• 7. Industry Engineering and Management Science
• 8. Mathematics
• 9. Engineering
• 10. Laws

Talents with computer and business administration specialties are most adaptive in the internet field, and other majors such as as language, social media, economy and the like are also popular.

According to LinkedIn, many talents in its talent pool take positions as managers, directors and other important positions in companies like Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and etc. Engineering, information technology, sales, HR, operation, project management, product management and design are major job positions in China internet industry. Positions as engineering and information technology meke up of the majority. Apart from some office software, java, Linux, Python, MySQL, C++, HRML and other computer professional skills and comprehensive skills become the basic competence that internet talents should equip with. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent employ a large number of college students, who just graduated in 2014. The booming of internet needs more excellent talents.

In China, 78% talents are proactive towards their jobs, far above the ratio of global proactive talents. 76% proactive talents are satisfied with their current jobs and 40% of the reactive are satisfied with their current jobs. However, the satisfactory degree has no relationship with job changing.

Passive talents spend more time in building a good social communication relationship with their workmates, while active talents have a tendency to devote more time to job hunting activities. Most talents would seek new work opportunities through internet and relationship network.

When having an opportunity to meet with company recruiters for the first time, 69% Chinese talents would like to obtain information such as the position responsibilities, salary, company culture and vision and the reason for the contact.

About 96% talents believe that interviews are crucial for their acquisition of jobs. 83% talents say that bad interview experiences would influence their opinions towards the companies, and 87% talents show good experiences would change their attitudes towards the positions or companies.

With talents, when they have communications with the company leaders, get answers on positions they employ, receive extra message after the interviews and experience the company culture, they would regard the interviews as pleasant experiences.

After interviews, 77% talents would like to get satisfactory news through phone calls, and 65% talents get unpleasant news from e-mails. Messages are expected after interviews, and timely drawbacks could add positive expressions on talents. 94% talents say keeping in touch with managers may lead them to make a decision quicker.

Salaries, promotion mechanism, company culture, and etc. are major important factors when talents consider the jobs they would engage in.

Chinses talents graduated from universities not long ago tend to evaluate salary as their primary reference of jobs. The expected wage of talents to some extent is determined by the recognition level of talents and wages of their previous jobs. Before an interview, searching for the average wages of certain industries may help talents make a proper estimate.

Also read: Baidu Revenues Reached US$2.67B in Q2 2015

Qihoo reported revenues of US$438.3 million in Q2 2015, an increase of 37.9% from U$317.9 million in the second quarter of 2014 and 14.0% from US$384.4 million in the first quarter of 2015. Net income attributable to Qihoo 360 was US$81.4 million, compared to US$39.1 million in the second quarter of 2014 and US$53.0 million in the prior quarter. The strong year-over-year growth was due to the continued solid performance in Qihoo’s online advertising.

Operating income of Qihoo was US$81.1 million, compared to US$43.9 million in the second quarter of 2014 and US$75.9 million in the prior quarter. Non-GAAP operating income was US$108.9 million, compared to US$69.7 million in the second quarter of 2014 and US$96.5 million in the prior quarter. Total monthly active users of Qihoo 360’s PC-based products and services reached 514 million in June 2015, compared to 496 million in June 2014, among which the number of monthly active users of Qihoo 360’s PC browsers was 388 million with user penetration of 73.0%.

In this Quarter, Qihoo launched 360 Auto Guard (automobile data recorder) and a new generation of 360 Kids Guard, which were well received by users. Total smartphone users of Qihoo 360’s primary mobile security product reached a record high of 799 million in June 2015, compared to 641 million in June 2014. Qihoo was expected to expand its services and brand influence from online to offline and from virtual to real settings through the marketing of smart hardware and smartphones which started to take pre-orders on September 1, 2015.

Qihoo’s Second Quarter 2015 Highlights

• Revenues were US$438.3 million, a 37.9% increase from US$317.9 million in the second quarter of 2014.
• Net income attributable to Qihoo 360 was US$81.4 million, compared to US$39.1 million in the second quarter of 2014.
• Net cash generated from operations in the second quarter of 2015 was US$128.8 million.
• Total monthly active users of Qihoo 360’s PC-based products and services reached 514 million in June 2015.
• Monthly active users of Qihoo 360’s PC browsers was 388 million and user penetration was 73.0% in June 2015.
• Total smartphone users of Qihoo 360’s primary mobile security product reached 799 million in June 2015.

Also read: China Top Smartphone Brands in H1 2015

In June 2015, the average daily user reach of fashion websites was 12.63 million, according to iResearch data.

The average daily reach of Rayli.com.cn was 1.45 million, and ranked in the first place, followed by Aili.com.cn and Self.com.cn.

In June 2015, the effective usage time of fashion websites was 25,567,000 hours. The top three sites by total monthly effective time were Livemook.com (5.53 million hours), Aili.com.cn (2.56 million hours) and Rayli.com.cn (2.21 million hours). Self.com and Yoka.com had an effective total monthly usage time of 1.79 million and 1.64 million hours respectively.

Also read: Baidu Revenues Reached US$2.67B in Q2 2015

The total number of China’s tourists is estimated to exceed 4.1 billion person trips in 2015, and reach a total revenue of 3840 trillion yuan (US$617.40 billion), according to China Tourism Academy.

In Q1 2015, the total transaction value of China online vacation travel market reached 11.06 billion yuan (US$1.80 billion), an increase of 59.8% year-on-year and 21.7% QoQ; and the total transactions of China online travel market reached 94.76 billion yuan (US$15.28 billion) in Q1 2015, an increase of 51.3% YoY and 9.4% QoQ.

In the first half of 2015, online travel business contributed a lot in China’s travel market, and many big online travel operators received investment from enterprises domestic and abroad. Jingdong invests US$500 million funds in Tuniu; Ctrip, after acquired eLong, received US$250 million investment from Priceline, which was the largest international online travel company. And, Lvmama received 500 million yuan (US$80.39 million) strategic investment from Jin Jiang International Holdings Limited Company.

The outbound tourism also maintained a steady growth in H1 2015. The total number of outbound and inbound tourism reached 127 million, with an increase of 9.8% year over year and the number of outbound tourists reached 61.9 million visitors. Japan, the United States and some European countries were hot travel places. Most people would book tickets or flights through mobile apps. Read more about China’s tourists travel intention in 2015 here.

Under the proactive fiscal policy and relatively easy monetary conditions, tourism consumption and industrial investment would have further promotion. Travel agencies, online travel companies, and other areas of the field would have more room for development. Besides, with the penetration of China mobile travel apps and Chinese citizens’ trend to travel, 2015 is forecasted to be a fruitful year for tourism industry.

Also read: Baidu Revenues Reached US$2.67B in Q2 2015

On July 29 2015, Windows 10 operating system was launched in China, which caused a stir among Chinese users. On the first day of the release, Microsoft had announced the adoption within 24 hours was 14 million copies in China. On the third day, Windows 10 OS had been installed on over 67 million computers in China.

According to Statcounter, in July 28, before the official release of Windows 10, Windows 7 remained as the dominant operation systems in China (60.84%), followed by Windows XP (25.05%) and Windows 8.1 (7.68%); and Mac OS X also enjoyed 1.37% of the share before Win10 (0.37%, the preview version).

However, by July 31, less than 48 hours after the release of Windows 10, the Chinese subscribers had been more than that of Mac OS X. The retail edition of Windows 10 Home was officially priced at 888 yuan (US$138.71), Windows 10 Professional 1799 yuan (US$281.02).

Also read: China E-Payment Insights 2015

Since the start of 2015, the growth rate of Chinese automobile transaction volume had slowed down its growth. In June 2015, the growth rate of the automobile market was merely 1.4%, 7 percentage points lower than June 2014.

Less developed cities might make a breakthrough for the downturn market. Automobile market in first-tier and second-tier cities shrunk gradually, while buyers in third-tier to six-tier cities increased.

According to data from Alibaba, about 67% automobile buyers who were also Taobao users were from less developed cities. Mainland China has 657 cities while many third-tier, fourth-tier, fifth-tier and sixth-tier cities were small in size and dispersion in the location. Sometimes automobile companies could not obtain a clear and correct evaluation on local market. Social media could be used for penetrate third- to six-tier cities further.

The post-90s would be another important pillar in the future automobile market. In June 2015, the post-90s buyers accounted for 29%, 8 percentage points higher compared with January 2014. The ratio of the post-80s and post-70s auto buyers decreased.

Also read: China’s Mobile Car Calling Market from 2014 to 2015

With rapid development of mobile internet, mobile and social features will play more and more important role. Among all the mobile apps in China in July 2015, social platforms like WeChat and QQ ranked first with the monthly average users of 556.48 million and 424.28 million respectively.

Among the top 20 mobile apps, those owned by Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and 360 took the majority, especially Tencent. WeChat, QQ, QQ browser, Tencent Video, QQ Music, Tencent News, WeSync and WeSecure took up 40% of top 10 mobile apps. WeChat was the most active social platform with the monthly average users of 556.48 million; Baidu App was the most active mobile search engine with the monthly average users of 190.03 million. In the mobile video market, Tencent, iQIYI and Youku led the market, with fierce competition and close gap of MAUs (monthly active users); and see the top 20 mobile apps in July 2015 below.

Also read: China Mobile App Advertising Market in 2014

In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by shipments volume of 15.9%, followed by Huawei (15.7%). Apple ranked third, followed by Samsung and Vivo. The rapid development of Xiaomi has shocked the smartphone market after it was founded five years ago. The company’s posted sales growth slowed down which prompted many people wondering whether Xiaomi could achieve its ambitious expansion plan.

So far, Xiaomi and Huawei have been two most famous Chinese mobile phone brands with a large market share in China. 15 out of 100 Chinese internet users would have a Xiaomi smartphone.

In terms of future potential purchase of Xiaomi smartphone, 18% of Chinese internet users would consider. Some Asian markets also had purchase intention. However, in most countries, Xiaomi is still not as popular as Samsung or iPhone who had already established their brands in the global market. Xiaomi still had room for development, but it might not enjoy high growth rates as it did before.

Also read: China E-Payment Insights 2015

In H1 2015, the total transaction revenue of China’s gaming market reached 60.51 billion yuan (US$9.73 billion), an increase of 21.9% compared with the same period of last year. The transaction revenue of self-developed online gaming market reached 45.83 billion yuan (US$ 7.37 billion), accounting for 75.7%; and the overseas market revenue was US$1.76 billion, according to GPC, IDC and CNG.

Client-end gaming users reached 134 million in China. And, the actual transaction revenue reached 26.71 billion yuan (US$ 4.29 billion), with an increase of 4.5% compared with the same period in 2014. The number of webpage gaming users in China reached 305 million; the transaction revenue reached 10.28 billion yuan, with an increase of 12.0% YoY. China mobile gaming users reached 366 million; the transaction revenue reached 20.93 billion yuan, with an increase of 67.2%. See more about China’s online gaming market here.

China’s mobile gaming is becoming an essential part in China mobile users’ daily life. Users tdend to favor games on mobile devices rather than on computers. In recent years, China’s gaming industry has been developing reasonably, while the penetration of mobile devices, improvement of 3G/4G network and popularity of social platform lead to the rapid growth of mobile online gaming market in China.

And various categories of mobile games, such as card games, mild games, role play games, music games action games and so on together with many newly-launched games attracted the interests of more and more mobile users, especially female users who didn’t play online games at all. In the second half of 2015, China’s mobile gaming market is expected to attract more users.

Also read: Baidu Revenues Reached US$2.67B in Q2 2015

In Q1 2015, China mobile shopping market total transaction value exceeds RMB36.23 billion (US$5.9 billion) according to data of iResearch. Affected by the Chinese New Year, mobile shopping’s QoQ growth in Q1 2015 was relatively slowed. However, iResearch estimates that in Q2 2015, mobile shopping would still keep rapid growth.

In terms of transaction value, in Q1 2015, China mobile shopping accounted for 47.8% of the whole online shopping market, which even had increased by 22 percentage from the same period last year.

There are two major reasons for China mobile shopping’s overwhelming development. Through 2014, netizens’ mobile shopping habits were getting mature. On the other hand, at the beginning of 2015, various e-commerce websites continuously improved service on mobile device to stimulate mobile shopping.

In Q1 2015, Taobao still ranked the top among all the mobile shopping apps, representing 84.5% market share, followed by Jingdong.

Also read: 20 Charts on China Mobile / WeChat Shopping Market

Sogou, one of the top three search engines in China, revenues were US$116 million, up 66% YoY and down 3% QoQ according to Sohu’s financial results.

Mobile search made a greater contribution to Sogou’s revenue, and Sogou expects to grow substantially faster than the overall search industry in China.

Mr. Xiaochuan Wang, CEO of Sogou, commented,

In the first quarter, Sogou maintained its solid growth momentum. Our in-depth cooperation with Tencent, in particular with Weixin, has brought unique capabilities to our mobile search and further enhanced our competitiveness.

Aggregate search traffic rose by 60% year-over-year while mobile search traffic jumped 130%. It’s expected that mobile search traffic will surpass PC traffic at some point of 2015. Our financial performance was impressive as well. Quarterly revenues were $116 million, up 66% year-on-year, and we achieved non-GAAP net income of $16 million.

Sogou revenues are expected to be between US$135 million and US$145 million in Q2 2015; this implies a sequential increase of 16% to 25% and an annual growth of 48% to 59%.

Read more: Baidu, Sogou among Top 5 Biggest Search Engines in the World

25% more rural shoppers than tier-1 and tier-2 city dwellers report feeling more ‘empowered’ and see themselves as ‘online gurus’ who are eager to be the first to try out new products.

Growth in online shopping in counties and villages in China has outpaced those in cities, becoming a new engine that is further driving China’s domestic consumption, according to research from Alibaba Group.

In Q2 2012, China’s online shopping on Taobao by people in rural areas accounted for 7.11% of total; by Q2 2014, the rate increased to 8.3%. Online shopping is a rising trend in rural China. Read an overview of rural China’s e-commerce market here.

Related: Tips for Reaching China Rural Consumers for E-commerce Marketing

Check out photos of how China Internet companies advertise in rural areas here.

Read more: 74% Chinese Rural Residents Willing to Travel in 2014

Netease completed 2014 with a 42.5% YoY increase in Q4 revenues, led by a 35.7% increase in online game services, a 22.7% increase in advertising services and a 224.2% increase from Netease expanding e-mail, e-commerce and others business.

Netease total revenues for Q4 2014 were RMB3,683.6 million ($593.7 million), compared to RMB3,325.9 million in Q3 2014 and RMB2,585.1 million in Q4 2013.

Online games revenues were RMB2,863.3 million ($461.5 million) for Q4 2014, compared to RMB2,459.6 million in Q3 2014 and RMB2,109.5 million in Q4 2013.

Advertising revenues were RMB439.5 million ($70.8 million) for Q4 2014, compared to RMB478.3 million and RMB358.2 million for Q3 2014 and the Q4 2013.

Revenues from e-mail, e-commerce and others were RMB380.8 million ($61.4 million) for Q4 2014, compared to RMB388.0 million in Q3 2014 and RMB117.5 million in Q4 2013.

Related: Netease Had 680M Registered E-mail Users by Q2 2014

Netease gross profit was RMB2,485.4 million ($400.6 million), compared to RMB2,258.4 million in Q3 2014 (an increase of 10%) and RMB1,727.2 million in Q4 2013 (an increase of 43.9%). Net profit totaled RMB1.3 billion ($204.9 million), compared to RMB1.2 billion in both Q3 2014 and Q4 2013.

Netease Fiscal Year 2014 Financial Results

Total revenues for fiscal year 2014 were RMB12.5 billion (US$2.0 billion), compared to RMB9.8 billion for the preceding fiscal year.

• Revenues from online games were RMB9.8 billion (US$1.6 billion), compared to RMB8.3 billion in 2013
• Revenues from advertising services were RMB1.6 billion (US$250.1 million), compared to RMB1.1 billion
• Revenues from e-mail, e-commerce and others were RMB1.1 billion (US$179.5 million), compared to RMB368.0

Gross profit for fiscal year 2014 was RMB8.5 billion (US$1.4 billion), compared to RMB6.7 billion in 2013. The increase in gross profit for fiscal year 2014 was primarily driven by increased revenues from online game services, advertising services and e-commerce business.

Related: Netease owns one of the top news app in China

The increase in online game services gross profit in 2014 was primarily attributable to increased revenues from the Company’s self-developed games such as Fantasy Westward Journey II, New Westward Journey Online II and various mobile games, as well as from Blizzard’s Hearthstone^®: Heroes of Warcraft™.

The increase in advertising services gross profit in 2014 was due to a rise in demand, mainly from the automobile, communication services and foods and beverages sectors, as well as from the increased monetization of the NetEase Mobile News Application and the impact of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The improvement in e-mail, e-commerce and others gross profit in 2014 was primarily attributable to an increase in revenue from NetEase’s e-commerce business.

Total operating expenses for fiscal year 2014 were RMB3.7 billion (US$594.1 million), compared to RMB2.4 billion for the preceding fiscal year. The increase in operating expenses in 2014 was primarily due to increased marketing expenses as a result of marketing and promotional activities for NetEase’s online games, e-commerce and advertising services businesses, mainly due to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and increased research and development expenses resulting from increased headcount and average compensation.

Net profit for fiscal year 2014 totaled RMB4.8 billion (US$766.6 million), compared to RMB4.4 billion for the preceding fiscal year. For fiscal year 2014, Netease reported a net foreign exchange loss of RMB18.0 million (US$2.9 million), compared to a net foreign exchange loss of RMB15.3 million for the preceding fiscal year.

Also read: Baidu’s Performance in 2014

Recently, according to the news leaked on the internet, Weibo will integrate the original payment interface to launch “unified checkout counter”.

All applications on Weibo can access the unified one to enjoy payment service in different scenarios. Besides, such “unified checkout counter” can adapt to a certain payment scenario automatically according to merchant’s business and recognize the client-side version to assign payment channel.

In July 2014, Sina Weibo fully opened its payment system and provided order acceptance service for verified company accounts. Once the application is approved, merchants can post content with product card on Weibo, so other users can buy such product with clicking on the card on Weibo.

However, Weibo covers desktop and mobile devices which indicates users can make payment in various devices. In order to adapt to different payment scenarios, companies will choose corresponding interface which may affect service efficiency. With the launching of “unified checkout counter”, companies only need to access one interface to realize payment coverage in different scenarios.

One Weibo staff did a demonstration with a product card posted on Weibo; users can buy the product on mobile device or desktop. In addition Weibo URL can be shared in other applications, and users who are interested in the product can use Weibo payment service without visiting Weibo.

The person who takes charge of Weibo business tools said, “the purpose to launch ‘unified checkout counter’ is to improve efficiency and service quality for company accounts”. As of early December 2014, Weibo shops have accessed the “unified checkout counter’， and other applications will have access to it soon.

Weibo monthly active users (“MAUs”) were 167 million as of September 30, 2014. 82% Sina Weibo users do online shopping in Q3 2014, which made Weibo rank top among social apps in the world according to data of Global Web Index.

As of October 2014, the number of users who paid on Weibo was nearly 8 million. Besides, in Q3 2014, the companies’ transaction value via Weibo payment had more than tripled from Q2 2014.

Also read: China B2C E-commerce Performance on Weibo in Sep 2014

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

Tencent Myapp app store had daily distribution volume of 110 million, covering more than 90% China mobile gaming users according to Tencent’s vice president, Wang Bo.

“Tencent mobile gaming platforms include featured gaming platform and Myapp platfrom. The featured platform consists of Wechat and mobile QQ which can meet users’ entertainment needs while Myapp platform involves Myapp app store and QQ browser which can satisfied various needs”, said Wang Bo.

In Q3 2014, WeChat and mobile QQ’s monthly active users were 468 million and 542 million respectively.

In 2014, Tencent Myapp app store’s distribution had high growth. Compared with the distribution volume of 100 million in November 2014, now the number increased by another 10 million with monthly increase of 10% according to Piao Yanli, Tencent’s commercial vice president.

Tencent’s mobile app distribution kept rapid development in Q3 2014 and it increased by 1.4% from Q2 according to data of EnfoDesk in Q3 2014. The number of China app distribution exceeded 28.6 billion with an increase of 12.3% from prior quarter. Baidu league remained to be the top distribution team with market share of 41.8%.

Also read: Tencent Got More Than WeChat Payment to Compete with Alipay on Mobile

In Q3 2014, the number of China app distribution exceeded 28.6 billion with an increase of 12.3% from prior quarter. Baidu league remained to be the top distribution team with market share of 41.8%. Tencent’s mobile app distribution kept rapid development in Q3 2014 and it increased by 1.4% from Q2 according to data of EnfoDesk.

As of 30 June 2014, the total number of users in Baidu app distribution platforms exceeded 600 million and with an average of 130 million daily distribution and 10 million developers, having become the largest Android app distribution platform in China in Q2 2014.

The improvement of China mobile internet effectively promotes use of mobile application and distribution of mobile app. As of the third quarter of 2014, 3G/ 4G subscribers exceeded 550 million, representing 43% of total mobile phone users. With 4G’s popularity in China, internet quality has been further improved and traffic charge has been gradually reduced. All these can stimulate mobile internet users to download apps in app stores which further brings great opportunity for China mobile app distribution market.

Also read: Top 100 Mobile Apps in China

In Q3 2014, top 3 China Android app stores were 360 mobile assistant, Myapp(Tencent) and Baidu mobile assistant.

Having risen from the 8th to the 6th in the previous quarter, MIUI app store (Xiaomi) growth shows no signs of slowing down as it rised to the 5th, closing in on Google Play – their smart phone activation growing from 11% in Q2 to 12% in Q3. This steady climb is in line with previous estimates, with much of the companies’ gain attributed to its increased smart phone sales across China.

Wandoujia dropped one place to the 6th, their total smart phone reach dropping to 10% compared to 11% in Q2 2014. At the bottom of the ranks Anzhi Market has increased their coverage to 7% (compared to 6% Q2) while Oppo Store outrank the CMCC Mobile Application Market with a total smart phone coverage of 5%.

GunZ Dash ranked top among China Android mobile games. Tencent dominated China mobile game market with 7 of top 10 mobile games were published by Tencent; and 3 of them were in top 5 in Q3 2014.

Also read: China Mobile App Distribution Channels Market Share

China internet users will exceed 643.6 million by end of 2014, estimated by eMarketer. The penetration is high among young adults. 80% of China internet users between 18 to 34 years old use internet every month.

China internet users an average own 1.9 devices per person.

Most internet users in China go online everyday. This is true across all age ranges, with 64% of Internet users 55 or older coming online everyday.

Smartphone internet users in China use their smartphones for a range of everyday activities.

52% of Chinese respondents made their last clothing/ footwear purchase online – one of the highest rates the world. The 3 most popular online shopping news apps were Meilishuo, Mogujie and Koudai in September.

iResearch estimates China mobile shopping market is going to exceed RMB800 billion (US$129.7 billion) this year, 30% of total total online shopping transactions.

59% of respondents in China researched their last purchase both online and offline.

1 in 3 of Chinese smartphone users used their device during their last purchase.

Chinese respondents frequently research online and then buy offline – this is particularly the case for car insurance and TV sets.

Most Chinese respondents watch online video to be entertained or inspired. In Q3 2014, China online video market reached RMB6.82 billion (US$1.11 billion) with increase of 9.3% QoQ, and it is still showing great power in China.

1 in 3 respondents in China watched their last online video with someone else. This was usually their partner.

55% of Chinese respondents were fully focused on the last online video they watched.

Online video is often watched while commuting/ travelling in China.

Also read: China Mobile Internet Market in Q3 2014