"Wifiin" can manage accessing each Wifi services that different careers provide. It is a very useful mobile app for travelers and sojourners in China.

In China, 3 big careers (China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom) provide each different Wifi service such as CMCC or ChinaNet. And these users has to authenticate by their mobile phone number to use these each service. Furthermore, this service is not mutual use.
Ex) China Mobile user cannot use the service that is provided by China Unicom and China Telcom.

It is a little bit inconvenient for travelers and sojourners in China.

But "Wifiin" can solve this problem.

This app can be downloaded from here, and the user basically can use it without charge. And this app supports Android smartphone/ tablet (2.3 or later), iPad, jailbroken iPhone and Windows phone.
* This app doesn't support normal iPhone and Windows 8 at this time.

The utilization of this app is very simple. When first boot this app, you can get 100 points. 100 points means that user can use each Wifi service for 100 minutes via this app.

Next you have to click the wifi button in the lower side of the screen to search the available Wifi service.

Blue colored points mean that its service is available. All that's left is to click that button.

After you will use all of this 100 points, of course you can charge additional points. There are two methods to charge this point as follows.

1. Download the recommended app.

 

You have only to download the recommended apps for charging this point. The points that you can get is different by each app (40 to 100 points).


2. Buy points

If you are a heavy mobile internet user, of course, you can buy the additional point by cash. Basically its price is 0.05 RMB per a minute, so it can be said that it is very reasonable.


I think that this business model itself is making sense. Because this app can solve the problem that travelers and sojourners in China have. Furthermore, the provider of this app can get the ad revenue from the app developers who want to increase the number of downloads. Of course, they can also get the cash revenue from the heavy mobile internet users.



The sole concern is an interruption or impediment from each careers. Because this app has the possibility to decrease the service revenue of each career.

I wish that this provider of this app will reach an understanding with each career. :)


Source => The official page of Wifiin, TechWom

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

Alibaba released the new smartphones that was adopted their customized OS with Chinese mobile vendors. They will accelerate the cooperation with Apps developer in this year.

Aliyun(It's a group company of Alibaba) has provided own customize mobile OS since September 2011, but they released the new smartphones that was adopted its OS with Chinese mobile vendor yesterday.

The vendor who provide these smartphones at this time are: Zopo, AMOI, GFIVE, KONKA, XLJ. And a part of these new smartphones are already introduced at corporate page of Aliyun.

The price zone of these smartphones are 799 to 1399 RMB(= 128 to 224 USD). And all of smartphones adopted quad-core CPU and 1GB RAM, so it can be said that the cost performance of these smartphones are very high.

And in the event, they said that they will accelerate the cooperation with apps developer in this year. Specifically, they will invest 1 billion RMB(= 160 million USD) for the cooperation with apps developer in this year. And they also said that they will pay 1 RMB per 1 units as the incentive to the mobile vendor who will adopt the Yun OS.


Yun OS is generally recognized as the Android based customize OS, but Alibaba said that it's not true. They said that Yun OS is the Linux based customize OS, and it is compatible with Android (apps). And according to the some resources, the apps that was developed on Android can run on Yun OS, but the apps that was developed on Yun OS can't run on Android.


Anyway, we have to continue watching their actions as ever.


Source => Sohu IT, WEST-E,  SXdaily

SDO mobile will also release the Firefox OS based smart watch after the Android based one.

SDO mobile published that they will release the Android based smart watch a few days ago, but they said that they will also release the Firefox OS based smart watch in near future.

They said that they will release its Android based version in June, but the release date of its Firefox OS version isn't still decided.

This smart watch is named "Bambook Smart Watch", and it has the features of networking, SMS, GPS, the recording data or informations and so forth. Furthermore according to the news, it has the cooperation feature with some consumer electronics.


SDO mobile have provide e-book for a long time in China, and they are the leader of this market. But as I explained before, the growth speed of the e-book market in China is too slow, so they also provided the Android smartphone "Bambook smartphone" as their new business.

Recently, Apple's iWatch has draws some people's attention in China too, but we have to watch whether their smart watch also will have draws people's attention or not.


Source => TechWeb

In China, Android apps were downloaded over 6 billion times in 2012.

91 helper and HIAPK are each the one of biggest Android apps market in China,and both market are operated by NetDragon Websoft Inc.

And according to the recent report by this company, over 6 billion Android apps were downloaded from 2 app market above in 2012. And these market have about 610,000 titles of Android apps on their site as of the end of 2012, and 40,000 apps are averagely uploaded per one month.


And they provided some detailed data about this as follows.

1. The history of Android apps download number(2012 Jul - 2012 Dec).

Jul    490 million times
Aug  570 million times
Sep   700 million times
Oct   730 million times
Nov  760 million times
Dec   790 million times

Blue : Non-game apps
Orange : Game apps



2. The history of Android apps upload number(2012 Jul - 2012 Dec).

Jul    37,000 titles
Aug   40,000 titles
Sep    40,000 titles
Oct    41,000 titles
Nov   46,000 titles
Dec    46,000 titles

Blue : Non-game apps
Orange : Game apps



You can download the complete report from here.
*This report was written in Chinese.
** For downloading this report, login to Sina Weibo is required.



According to the report by Kantar, the market share of Android was 71.5% in China as of January. And its market share continue rapidly increasing.

But this report also said the penetration rate of smartphone is still about 22%, so I think that there is still a lot of chance in this market.


Source => DoNews

Chinese mobile SMS was substantially negative growth in 2012. WeChat or Weibo had impact on it?

MIIT released the report that is written about the summary of Chinese mobile SMS, and this report said that the number of SMS messages was 897.31 billion incidents in 2012.

This report also said that the number of Chinese SMS users are 765 million people in 2012. The number of Chinese mobile user was about 1100 million people in the end of 2012, hence it follows that about 70% of mobile users use SMS in China.

Actually SMS is the most popular method of communication by mobile phone in China, and many people use it to send the greeting at holiday or memorial day, such as Chinese new year.

But going back to the subject, the number of SMS messages was increasing only 2.1% compared to 2011. And the number of mobile phone users in China was increasing about 11% compared to the previous year, so it can be said that the number of SMS messages was substantially negative growth in 2012.

One of this reason was the rapid progress of WeChat or Weibo. Mainly young people shifted the communication method on mobile phone from SMS to WeChat or Weibo. WeChat and Weibo already each have over 300 million users, and this growth will continue in 2013. So the number of SMS messages may be truly negative growth in 2013.

Source => cnBeta, Sohu IT

The battle of Weibo and Weixin(WeChat) in 2012 and 2013. Each challenge and emerging.

2012 has already past, and 2013 already came. 

So today, I would like to think back on the trend of Chinese Social Media market that is focusing Weibo and Weixin(WeChat) last year, and survey the trend of them this year.

It can be said that 2012 was the year that the growth power of Weibo was decreasing, and the growth power of Weixin was dramatically increasing. About the fact that the growth power of Weibo was decreasing, we can make it clear from the history of reports from CNNIC.

Its indication was appeared from the second half of 2011, but its decrease was more remarkable in this year. The report of the second half of 2012 was not published yet, but I expect that the growth rate of this period will also remain at single digit figures.

Furthermore, I personally feel that the rate of active users is also gradually decreasing. There are two reasons for this.

1. The online user of friends was decreasing.

For example, we can find that how many users is now online on Sina Weibo as follows.

Today's number is only 27 people... Actually today is still holiday in China, but my friend on Sina Weibo exist about 600 people. The rate of online user is only 4.5%. 

It is a extreme example, but the daily average online user of last year was about 70 people, and the average of the year before last was about 130 people.

2. The traffic from Weibo was decreasing.

Our company was continuously posting the information on each social media of WW for marketing purpose. Weibo, especially Sina Weibo, brought the largest traffic to us, but this number was suddenly decreasing from the second half of 2012.

On the other hand, the growth power of Weixin is dramatically increasing as I explained before. And many companies already started the promotion activity on Weixin, and they started to post their QR code of Weixin on the other social media platform too.

For example, Starbucks also started their promotion activity on Weixin to Chinese people, but it's a one of representative example of O2O marketing.

Weixin will certainly accelerate their O2O marketing solutions this year, so more companies will start their marketing activity on Weixin this year.

I think that 2013 will become the challenge year for Weibo, and it will become emerging year for Weixin.

Weibo, for example Sina Weibo already started the monetization like "WeiboWallet", Ads on their platform, "Weibo Club" and so forth. But these can not get the success without increasing the number of user and online active user rate. This is also true for other Weibo provider, such as Tencent.

But on the other hand, Weixin also cannot relax their guard.

Because the similar service, such as LINE and Kakao Talk also watch vigilantly for a chance to enter Chinese Social Media market. And furthermore, there is a possibility that completely different social media platform may suddenly appear like a comet this year.

I would like to continue watching the trend of Social Media in China, mainly Weibo and Weixin(including other IM tools) this year too. But in the last, I would like to introduce the service that I personally expect in 2013.

1. LBS advertising

Actually, it is similar to O2O marketing by QR code. But I would like to define that O2O and LBS is separately. The market of LBS advertising in China was rapidly growing in the 2011 as I explained before. The report for 2012 is not published yet, but according to the report by CNNIC, mobile device became the top of all method connecting to the internet on 2012 Jun.

And the growth speed of mobile internet user in 2013 will be faster than last year. So mobile Ads, especially this LBS Ads will be more popular in China.

2. Enterprise Social Networking (Enterprise Collaboration tools)

As I explained before, the Enterprise Social Networking(ESN) market in China is rapidly growing, and it is estimated that this market growth rate will be 246% in 2012 by CCW Research. And ESN tool is suitable to the circumstance and culture for business in China.

More and more many company started to provide the ESN tools in China. And foreign company such as Salesforce, Yammer, IBM also may be watching vigilantly for a chance to enter this market in China.

So watching from the point of view by the user side and the provider side, it can be said that the popularity of ESN will be more and more rising this year.

42.4% of iOS user jailbreak their devices in China. But on the newer device, the rate of jailbreak is decreasing.

According to the current report by Umeng, 42.4% of iOS user jailbreak their devices in China. Its breakdown is as follows.

The ratio of jailbreak:

iPhone 3GS  69.2%
iPhone 4       48.6%
iPad              48.3%
iPad(New)   37.0%
iPhone 4S    36.1%
iPad2 3G     32.4%
iPad2 Wifi  31.9%





The jailbreak rate of the newer devices is lesser than older one. This report said that there are two reasons of its result.

1. The difficulty of jailbreak become more difficult than before.
2. The motivation of jailbreak is lower than before.

Actually, Apple is enhancing to measures for jailbreak, there are no method to jailbreak some version of base band. Furthermore Apple already started to provide official app center in China too, and users can download more than 300,000 apps or games from there.

According to the news, China Telecom start to sell iPhone 5 on December 10th, and China Unicom also start to sell it in the end of December.

Let's keep attention how much iPhone 5's jailbreak rate will be.


Source => Umeng

Android continue to increase their market share in China. Their market share exceeded 90% in Chinese smartphone market in the third quarter.

According to the recent report by Eguan, the smartphone market share in China of Android exceeded 90% in the third quarter.

In the second quarter, the market share of Android was 82.8%, hence it follows that their market share increased 7.3% compared to the second quarter.

iOS and Symbian both decreased their market share, both had 6.0% market share in the second quarter, but iOS decreased to 4.2%, and Symbian decreased to 2.4% in the third quarter.


According to this report, the sales amount of smartphone in China was 49.17 million units in the third quarter, the sales rate of smartphone continue to increase in the third quarter too.

*Yellow colored graph is the sales rate of smartphone, and blue colored graph is non-smartphone one.


More and more mobile vendors entered Chinese smartphone market, Android and related business in China will be more and more brisk in future.



Source => Eguan-1, Eguan-2

MIIT said 3G mobile phone user exceeded 200 million people in China. The ratio of smartphone is rapidly increasing.

MIIT(Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China)  said Chinese 3G mobile phone user increased 10.08 million people in this month, and its user totally reached 202.639 million people as of September.

And they said the share of 3G user number by each career as follows.

As of September, China Mobile have 75.595 million 3G users, and China Unicom have 66.863 million 3G users, and China Telecom have 60.181 million users. As I said before, 3G market in China is still in the situation of competitive.


MIIT also said that smartphone shipment is rapidly increasing, the total its shipment was 172 million units as of September, and its number is increasing 183.4% compared to the previous year. In addition according to them, 83.2% of smartphone shipment was Android devices.


Total number of Chinese mobile user was 1.0847 billion at the same period of time, so Chinese mobile market may be more accelerating in future.



Source => IThome

Android already dominate 80% of China's smartphone market.

According to the report by Eguan, the market share of Android was 82.8% in China's smartphone market in the second quarter.

The market share of Android in the first quarter was 76.7%, so that is to say it increased 6.1% in a quarter.

Recently MIIT also said that the market share of Android was nearly 80% in China's smartphone market in the first half of the year, so it's no doubt that Android already dominate 80% of China's smartphone market now.

And according to MIIT, the number of smartphone shipments was nearly 100 million units in the first half of the year, and it increased 197% over last year.

On the other hand, Symbian still continue to decrease their market share, and it had finally fallen to 6.0%. The decline of Symbian is equivalent to the decline of Nokia, but they already changed direction to the cooperation with Windows Phone.

Yesterday, Nokia released Lumia 920 that is equipped with Windows 8, but the market share of Windows Phone( include Windows Mobile) was also small at this stage in China.

So we have to keep attentions whether this new mobile phone will get the popularity or not in future.

Source => Eguan, ChinaByte

The rate of iPad tablet user is six times more than Android tablet user in China.

UMENG, who provide mobile apps analytic tools, published the report that is written about Android and iOS active users status.

According this report,  in China, Android active user increased 87%, and iOS active user increased 42% in the second quarter.

And the ratio of mobile and tablet in each platform is as follows.

The ratio of iOS was 80.8% iPhone and 19.2% iPad, and the ratio of Android was 96.5 % mobile and 3.5% tablets. It also said that the ratio of iOS tablet is six times more than Android tablet.


Next is the ratio of each iPhone devices.

The ratio of iPhone 4S is gradually increasing, on the other hand the ratio of iPhone 4 is gradually decreasing. (But it still have over 50% share.)


Next is the ratio of each iPad devices.

The ratio of New iPad is rapidly growing, but the ratio of iPad 2(Wifi+3G) is totally 73.4%.


And next graph is the ratio transition of iOS version in the first half year.


iOS 5.1 was rapidly increasing, and it became the top share in the each version of iOS on April.


Next graph is the share of each Android device maker in the end of June.

#1  Samsung   23.8%
#2  HTC            18.5%
#3  Motolora    8.0%
#4  ZTE              7.4%
#5  Huawei        6.5%


The other  35.7%






Samsung is the top share in Android device makers, and they dominate a quarter of this market in China. But "the other" also have 35.7% share(mainly domestic device maker), so it also can be said  that this market is still the status of rival warlords.


And next graph is the ranking of each Android devices.

 #1 Samsung Galaxy Ace 4.11%
 #2 Motorola  Defy   3.12%
 #3 Xiaomi  M1    3.11%
 #4 HTC Incredible S   2.62%
 #5 Samsung Galaxy SII   2.60%
 #6 HTC Desire S   2.08%
 #7 ZTE  Blade U880   1.92%
 #8 ZTE  Blade V880   1.73%
 #9 Huawei  C8650   1.55%
 #10 HTC  Desire HD   1.35%





And the last graph is the ratio transition of each Android version in the first half year.

Basically Android 2.3 have around 70% share, and its rate of change is stable too. And Android 4.0 also started to increase gradually from May, but its share was still less than 10% in the end of June.


It looks like that China's mobile market still continue to be expanded with a focus on Android and iOS, but it also looks like that there are various changes.


Souce => UMENG

Smartphone users in China already exceeded 250 million people.

According to the report by iimedia, smartphone users in China already exceeded 250 million people.

This number was increasing 13.0% compared to the previous period, and they also said mobile internet users in China was 372 million people.

And the market share of each operating system was as follows:

Android had 55.4% market share, so it also can be said about 140 million Android smartphone devices are floating around in China. And this report also said that there are more 2,000 type of Android devices in Chinese market now.

Well, Symbian had 25.6% market share , iOS had 12.4%, Windows had 2.4%, and they can catch-up Android in the future, or Android continue to run the top share as ever, or new mobile OS will come to fore...

It cannot take our eyes off in the future too.

Original article => iimedia

Android smartphone market share in China increased to 76.7% in the first quarter.

According to the report by Eguan, Android smartphone market share in China increased to 76.7% in the first quarter.

Android smartphone market share in Q4,2011 was 68.4%, so that is to say Android market share increased 8.4% in a quarter. On the other hand, Symbian smartphone market share also decreased, and its market share was 11.8% in the first quarter.

Except iOS(that is to say 'iPhone'), other OS smartphone all was decreasing their market share...


It may be said that Android is the only winner in China at this stage.


Microsoft will release Windows 8 soon, and some vendor also will release based HTML 5 OS such as Mozilla. I'm interested in whether they can change the power balance of smartphone market in China or Android continue to be the only winner... :)



Original article => Eguan

Sina and HTC co-promote HTC one special model for Sina Weibo.

Sina and HTC China co-promote HTC One special model for Sina Weibo.

 
























They prepared two type devices, and one of them is HTC One S,  another is HTC One V. Basically these two devices are almost as same as world wide model of them, but main different point is a Sina Weibo hardware button. 

When user push on the Sina Weibo hardware button, Sina Weibo is started. And if user push on this button when they use Web browser, the link of this page is put on Sina Weibo tweet page.











Sina and HTC also co-released special model named "Weike" last year.

Sina Weibo would like to increase their mobile user, and HTC also would like to increase their user and market share, so it may be they had a community of interests.


Baidu and Tencent already released their own Android custom ROM, and Baidu co-released their special Android devices with Changhong.

There is a lot of various actors in Chinese mobile industry, so it will be more exciting and interesting more than now :)



Original article => HTC official account on Sina Weibo

Baidu released Android 4.0 based custom ROM "Baidu Cloud".

Today, Baidu released Android 4.0 based custom ROM "Baidu Cloud".

Few weeks ago, Baidu cooperated with Changhong and China Unicom published a smart phone that is preinstalled  "Baidu Cloud" OS, but at this time, its OS provide already existing mobile phone in the market as a ROM.

Now its ROM support only Google Nexus S, but Baidu said that they will add the target device in near future.


Recently, Tencent also released Android 4.0 based custom ROM "Tita", but why are they release their own custom OS? Its reason is very simple. They would like their presence to rise in mobile industry, and they would like to accelerate their mobile solution.


Now Chinese mobile industry is rapidly growing, so other company will release their own mobile OS or mobile device in near future too.


Original article => Baidu Cloud ROM

Chinese mobile LBS user exceeded 40 million people, but...

According to the report from Eguan, Chinese mobile LBS user was 43.38 million people as of the first quarter.

Its number increased 12.76 million people, 41.7% compared to the previous period.


And its active user was 5.85 million people at the same period.

Its number increased 1.6 million people, 41.0% compared to the previous period.


According to the news, the number of 4sq user was about 20 million people, so it can be said Chinese mobile LBS market is moderately big.


But now, the other service provider, such as Weibo and SNS also provide LBS function on their services in China, so LBS provider also have to consider multi service on their service.

It depends on their approach of multi service whether they can continue their growth or not.



Original article => Eguan

More than 60% of Sina Weibo active users are mobile user.

Sina Weibo announced their total registered users are more than 300 million, and more than 60% of Sina Weibo active users are mobile users on the mobile event in Beijing.

Sina Weibo has announced that will accelerate their mobile solution last July, its effort might borne fruit.


And they also announced its detail as follows:

1. Active users ratio by mobile OS
iPhone 28.7％　Android 27.5％　Wap 24.6％　Symbian 8.6％

2. The peak time of access by mobile device
just go to work, lunch time, dinner time, at bedtime

3. The average time of using Weibo per a day
60 minutes

4. The access ratio by each region
Guangdong 24%  Beijing 12%  Zhejiang 7%  Shanghai 6%

5. 280000 applications are registered on Sina Weibo, and mobile apps are registered 20000 title.


Sina Weibo also said that they will prepare a community dedicated for mobile application soon.


The theme of Sina Weibo on this event was "connect, growth, open, win-win", we have to keep attentions to their mobile solutions as before.

Original article => TechWeb

Active user of mobile security market in China break through 220 million people.

According to the report by Eguan, active user of mobile security market in China reached 223 million users.

Compared to previous period, its number increased 26.6%.


As I reported before, recently virus that are targeting for mobile, especially smartphone, are much increasing in China.

And Eguan also point out Chinese mobile security market will be continuously expanding in the future too, because of much increasing smartphone users and cloud users.


Original article => Eguan