China's Smartphone Explosion: The Top Opportunities In The World's Largest Mobile Market

Smartphone growth is slowing across the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The mobile industry needs to shift its center of gravity to China, which has already overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest smartphone market.

App developers should seriously consider China's app stores, and many mobile-focused companies should consider making deeper long-term strategic commitments to the Chinese mobile ecosystem. Areas like commerce, app monetization, and mobile ads are already growing nicely.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we survey the top opportunities and growth areas in China, including apps, hardware markets, and telecommunications. The report is organized around an easy-to-digest executive summary of our findings and an in-depth collection of charts and data organized into a PowerPoint presentation. The report also quantifies the opportunity in top mobile categories like commerce, payments and advertising.

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Here are some of our top findings on China:

• Mobile commerce: By the end of 2013, China's mobile commerce market - e-commerce transacted on smartphones or tablets - will reach $24.2 billion in value, and account for 11% of all e-commerce, a proportion that is on par with the U.S. market.
• Mobile transactions and payments: Sixty-nine percent of Chinese consumers said that they had purchased a product or service with their smartphone, compared with 46% in the United States.
• Mobile advertising: Mobile will account for $2.1 billion in spending or 13% of all online ad spending in China this year. That's also on par with U.S. levels (in the first half of 2013 U.S. online ad spending was 15% mobile).
• Smartphones: China is currently responsible for 38% of global smartphone shipments. The country is near the smartphone tipping point. In just over a year, smartphone subscriptions will outpace feature phone shipments.
• Mobile platforms: Android is dominant. It accounted for 72% of smartphone sales compared to Apple's 21% in the twelve weeks through August 2013.
• App stores: China is already responsible for 15% of global Apple app store downloads.
• Social media: China is a social media-savvy country - some 82% of smartphone owners post on social networks weekly.

The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use.

In full, the report:

• Breaks down the main trends driving the telecommunications and mobile hardware markets in China
• Reveals the unique characteristics of social media networks and their users in China
• Explains why Apple devices are overrepresented in market share when considering shipment numbers
• Shows how China stacks up in terms of its influence on the global app economy, for both Android and iOS
• Traces the growth of mobile commerce, mobile payments, and mobile advertising in China