The sales numbers of smartphone in China were 75.28 million units in the first quarter, and 83.5% of sales numbers were smartphone.

According to the report by Eguan, the sales numbers of smartphone in China were 75.28 million units in the first quarter. And it is 83.5% of whole mobile phone sales number, and it increased 141.5% compared to the last year.


According to the report by Gartner, the sales numbers of smartphone in the worldwide were 210.04 million units in the first quarter, so it can be said that one-third of smartphone were sold in China...

And according the report by MIIT, the annual sales numbers of smartphone were 258 million units, but it seems that its number will easily exceed 300 million units in this year.



And the following picture is the market share of each vendor in the first quarter.

Samsung    17.3%
Lenovo        13.1%
Coolpad      10.3%
Huawei        10.1%
ZTE                6.9%
Apple             6.4%
K-touch        4.3%
Gionee          3.8%
HTC               3.1%
OPPO            2.9%






Samsung got 17.0% market share, and they kept the top position in Chinese smartphone market, but Motorola and Nokia couldn't ranked in at this time.

HTC also downed their ranking compared to a few years ago, and it can be said that "replacing the old with the new" was  evidently occurred in Chinese smartphone market.



Xiaomi also has the chance of ranking in the top 10 vendors, and a lot of the other vendors also have the chance of it in future.

I'm also looking forward to watch the trend of this market from now on.


Source => Eguan

Facishare published the business version of WeChat. Is this a sign that the ESN market will accelerate in China again?

As you know, WeChat is the one of most popular communication tools in China. And many companies already use it as a marketing tool to develop the Chinese market.

And this time, Facishare started to provide the business version of WeChat.

    




This word of "business version" means that it is used as a corporate internal system like the enterprise social networking(ESN) tool.


Well, why isn't it provided by Tencent, but is provided by Facishare?


Tencent has provided the business version of QQ "Biz QQ" for a long time, they were seeking the business partner of it to accelerate its business. And the end of March, they targeted some companies as an its business partner, but it seems that Facishare was the one of them.

And on the other hand, Facishare is a company of providing ESN system in China, and they were invested from IDG last year as the series A.

QQ has over 800 million active users per a month, and actually people in China use it as a business communication tool. But the business version of QQ is not so popular compared to the generic QQ.

So Tencent was (is) seeking the business partner to accelerate the BtoB market, and it seems that this business version of WeChat is the next step of the business collaboration.


As I explained before, the ESN market is becoming gradually hot in China. And according to the report by CCW Research, the market scale of ESN increased 246% compared to the last year in 2012. And some researcher said that 2013 will become the year that the ESN market is dramatically growing in China.

How will they progress from now on? Let's keep attention to them as ever.


Source => Sina Weibo, 21CN, 21cbh

Tencent published the performance reporting of the first quarter. The active users of WeChat increased to 194.4 million people.

Tencent published the performance reporting of the first quarter this week.

That summary is as follows:

- Gross income  13.55 billion RMB (= 2.18 billion USD)
* It increased 40.4% compared to the last year, and increased 11.5% compared to the last quarter.

- Profit  4.07 billion RMB (= 0.66 billion USD)
* It increased 37.4% compared to the last year, and increased 17.3% compared to the last quarter.


- Instant messenger "QQ" has 825.4 million active users per a month.
* It increased 9.8% compared to the last year, and increased 3.4% compared to the last quarter.
- Peak simultaneous online users of QQ were 173.0 million people.
* It increased 3.3% compared to the last year, and decreased 1.9% compared to the last quarter.


- WeChat has 194.4 million active users.
* It increased 228.4% compared to the last year, and increased 23.1% compared to the last quarter.

- Qzone has 611 million active users.
* It increased 5.9% compared to the last year, and increased 1.4% compared to the last quarter.

The number of Tencent Weibo did not exist in this report.



Tencent still continues to accelerate the overseas deployment of Wechat , but Tencent formally started to provide WeChat to Indian market.

The registered users of WeChat will exceed 400 million people soon, but it seems that the favorable of WeChat continues for the time being.


Source => TechWeb, The performance reporting by Tencent

Baidu report said that about each 70% users use Win XP and IE in China.

According to the recent report by Baidu statistics, IE8 is the most used web browser in China as of the end of April.

IE8.0            38.05%
IE6.0            17.62%
Chrome        17.07%
IE9.0            10.41%
Sogou             6.27%
IE7.0              1.73%
Qihoo 360    1.41%
Maxthon       1.25%
Firefox          1.20%






The period covered by this report is three months that is from February 2013 to April.

As mentioned above, IE8 has 38.05% market share, and it is the most used web browser in China. But the worthy of special mentions are following two things.

- IE6 is still used by 17.62% users in China.
The data by "IE6 countdown" also said that 24.0% user still use IE6 in China. About the other country, the average utilization of IE6 is less than 2%, so it can be said that China is the special circumstances of web browser.

- Chrome is rapidly growing in this three months.
Chrome had 9.06% market share in the last three months. Hence it follows that Chrome got the almost double market share compared to the previous three months.



The next picture is the market share of the PC OS in China as of the end of April.

Windows XP        70.73%

Windows 7             25.1%

Windows Vista      0.59%

Mac OS                 0.42%

Windows 2003        0.3%

Other                     2.85%




The period covered by this report is also from February 2013 to April.

Over 70% users use Windows XP in China, and other 25% users use Windows 7. Hence it follows that they totally have over 95% market share in China.

The formal support from Microsoft of Windows XP will end in next April, but Qihoo 360 announced to continue support of Windows XP instead of MS after next April.


It is the something worth seeing whether Chinese XP users will upgrade or replace their OS to other OS or not.

Anyway at this time, I think that web service provider or app developer who wants to enter Chinese market have to consider the above results.


Source => Baidu statistics

How to use the Web browser version of WeChat.

I guess that almost WeChat users are usually using it by their mobile devices. But do you know there is its Web browser version?

For using it, at first, we have to click the "Web WeChat" in the home page of mobile WeChat, and click the "Start" button after that.

And the next, we have to access the page of its Web version from your PC, and capture the QR code to the mobile device to login.

After successfully capturing the QR code, we can find the page on the mobile devices as follows, so we have to click the "OK" button to start using its Web browser version.

After that, if there is no problem, you can start to use the web version of WeChat on your PC as following picture.

To end the web version, you have to click the "Web WeChat" button on your mobile device.

This Web version is suitable to input the long message and so forth, but the feature of Web version is less than mobile version.

- It doesn't support the moments feature
- It doesn't support the feature of searching the new user
...


As I introduced before, Tencent defines WeChat as a mobile communication tool, so it may there is no update or improvement for the Web version.

But as I said above, it may be useful to input the long message and so forth. :)


Source => Web version of WeChat

Jiathis published the new report of "Chinese social media information sharing ranking". WeChat was ranked in 3rd position.

Jiathis published the new report of "Chinese social media information sharing ranking" as of April 2013.

                                      Share         Click Rate
#1  Qzone                   15.59%        30.19%

#2  Sina Weibo           14.09%        24.05%

#3  WeChat                 12.82%          0.02%

#4  Renren                     7.80%          2.03%

#5  Tencent Weibo       7.11%       13.68%

........










Jiathis added WeChat as the object of ranking from this time, but WeChat was ranked in the 3rd place for the first time.


This represents the recent power of Wechat, but it has something in our mind that their click rate is much lower than Qzone or Sina Weibo.

The user number of WeChat will be shortly over 400 million people, and a lot of companies already use WeChat as a marketing tool. So this result maybe makes the marketing people nervous, but it's important that we will also continue to watch the trend of this after next month.


Source => Jiathis

In 2012, Tablet PC shipments were 10.31 million in China. What kind of situation is Surface Pro that started to sell in China last month?

Eguan published the new report that is written about the sales status of Tablet PC in China as follows.

According to this report, Tablet PC shipments were 3,197,000 units in the fourth quarter of 2012 in China, and it increased 35.2% compared to the last year. And their shipments were 10.31 million units in throughout the year for 2012, and it increased 60.5% compared to 2011.

According to the report by IDC, Tablet PC shipments of worldwide were 52.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, so it can be said that the share of shipments in China was about 6.1% of the worldwide.

But Eguan said that 2013 will become the year of explosive growth for Tablet PC. Actually, many Android Tablet was already shipped to the market in China, and iPad is also welcomed as the status from many people.

And Microsoft also started to sell "Surface Pro" in China from last month.

But according to the sources, the selling status of Surface Pro is not so good. A staff of GOME said that its sales numbers are one-tenth of iPad.
I think this main reason is the price of it. The price of Surface Pro is 6588 RMB, and it is much expensive than iPad(= 3688 RMB).

We have to continue watching the market status of Tablet PC in China, and we also have to watch the strategy of Microsoft for Surface Pro in the future.


Source => Eguan, Wangyi Finance