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Promotion of mobile applications in the Chinese market Automatic translate

Much has been said about the huge potential of China’s growing mobile app economy. When it comes to the global distribution of smartphones, China is a powerful growth engine and boasts the largest smartphone owner base in the world - in the spring of 2020, there were over 1.5 billion devices in China. Since the Chinese are strongly connected with each other via smartphones, the mobile market is growing rapidly. Therefore, it is of great importance both for companies looking to expand their business and for new developers looking for a cheaper (compared to Europe and the US) path to success in Chinese app stores.

Photo: Mac Lee | Unsplash
Photo: Mac Lee | Unsplash

China is also not a place where quantity is more important than quality. Unlike some other emerging markets such as Latin America and India, there is ample evidence that Chinese users are willing to spend more money on in-app purchases and have a good appetite for mobile app downloads that outstrips many Western numbers, but at the same time, they are also very demanding.

When it comes to promoting apps in China, this presents a challenge. The app store situation in China is incredibly fragmented and complex, localization is a huge problem, and developer revenues depend on channel partners, app stores and even the Chinese government. This creates a high barrier to entry, insurmountable alone for small and medium-sized projects. In practice, outside penetration of the Chinese mobile software market is virtually impossible without the help of specialized local companies such as, for example, WINWIN CHINA ( https://wwchina.app/ ).

As you probably already know, China has seen an explosive growth in smartphone users over the past few years, and despite temporary downturns, it is still ongoing. China now accounts for more than 50% of the established base of the Asia-Pacific market.

Chinese users are eager to spend money on in-app purchases, with 90% of all developer income in China coming from such purchases - Chinese users prefer to try features first, and then decide whether to pay for them. In addition, China is the world leader in mobile app revenue growth.

Android devices (including the new system from Huawei) dominate China, accounting for 75-80%. Despite a 20% share, an initial iOS estimate may prove to be a profitable step to market - because there is only 1 Chinese app store for Apple devices to work with, while you can find over 500 Android software stores.

The largest Android app store in China is Tencent My App. As of spring 20, it was used for 26 percent of all installed applications. Tencent is the developer of the WeChat mobile messenger. The second place is taken by Huawei App Store - the largest manufacturer of mobile devices in China. Its popularity is also growing and showing excellent performance in the domestic market.

The Competitive Advantage You Need

Since the market is very competitive, it is very important:

  • Don’t spend too much time planning and don’t get stuck in a long business cycle. Your competitors will act quickly, and you need to act quickly, even if you have to take some risk and change your product later.
  • Realizing that some competitors might be well funded and are willing to invest heavily in stimulating downloads to climb to the top of the charts.

For an app to be successful in the Chinese market, full localization is needed, not just a Chinese translation. To retain your audience, you will need a special design, user interface and functions familiar to the local audience.

You have to constantly add new features, include special elements, when Chinese New Year comes, the information you will display in your application should be really clear and easily accessible, creating too many subsections, you will easily lose your Chinese purpose.

China is a tricky country when it comes to app promotion. On the one hand, this is a huge opportunity for Western developers. The market is home to a staggering number of smartphone users with a great appetite for downloading apps and a lot of potential for growth. It is also possible to run very cheap marketing campaigns in China and you can make good money if you use a freemium business model. But China is also fraught with some serious problems. Localization needs to go beyond language translation and reflect the tastes and preferences of Chinese users, and when it comes to distribution, it’s important to partner with carriers, channels and app stores for your product to be distributed and monetized.

Whether you will come to China depends on your goals, the cost of working with your partner, and your efforts to ensure that the application is as relevant as possible for Chinese users.


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