In the recent article about web and Mobile app development for China, I had a detailed look at some of the most popular Chinese mobile apps and services — WeChat, QQ, Weibo, and AliPay. For the modern Chinese, each of them is a synonym of indispensable.

However, there are other mobile apps with hundred-million audiences in China. I’ve done some research and picked the top 10 most popular and rapidly growing Chinese mobile apps.

The idea of this article is to give you an overview of the prevailing mobile trends in China and show how you can leverage some of these apps for your business. Let’s go!

Taobao

Number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 617 million

Taobao is the biggest Chinese C2C marketplace where you can buy literally anything. In 2017, the total volume of transactions on Taobao and its sub-company called Tmall reached a jaw-dropping 3 trillion yuan ($435.6 billion), making it the largest Ecommerce website in the world. That’s right. In terms of both money turnover and active users, Taobao easily surpasses all western Ecommerce websites combined.

From a UX viewpoint, Taobao’s interface is almost identical to what you’ll find on eBay or Amazon. The marketplace allows you to sell items either for a fixed price or through auction. To check the credibility of this or that seller, you can view the section with their rating and other customers’ feedback.

Taobao uses various strategies to retain its existing customers and acquire new ones. For example, it collaborates with such platforms as Weibo and Youku to provide its customers with high quality and personalized content.

IQIYI

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 421,3 million.

Often referred to as the Netflix of China, IQIYI is one of the fastest growing online video streaming platforms in the world. It’s focused on high-quality and fully-licenced video content. IQIYI was one of the first platforms in the world that had an AI-based search and used Big Data to analyze human behavior.

However, there are some notable differences between IQIYI and Netflix. The first one is how they make money. Netflix is a subscription-based platform. Everybody who watches movies on Netflix either already pays for the subscription or uses a free trial and will soon buy the subscription.

The vast majority of IQIYI users, though, are the so-called freeloaders, i.e. people who don’t pay for the content. Today, IQIYI has about 50 mln paying users which is only a small part of its 421 mln audience.

So where does it get the revenue from? The platform’s main sources of income are advertising and content licence purchases. However, the number of paid subscribers is steadily growing and may soon catch up with Netflix.

The second difference is that IQIYI doesn’t stop at video content. It also provides other types of content such as live streaming and even offers online gaming services.

You can leverage IQIYI’s model to promote your brand in China through ads, exposing it to millions of mobile users.

Baidu

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018:

Baidu is the Google of China. In addition to being the largest Chinese search engine (and the second largest in the world), Baidu has a very similar set of online tools such as Baidu Maps or Baidu NetDisk.

What makes it different, though, is the number of custom search services. For example, Baidu Government Information Search allows you to browse through Chinese rules and regulations while Baidu Youa is an Ecommerce service for business owners to sell their products. You can have a look at the full list of the services here (it’s really huge!).

Same as Google, Baidu has a mobile app. Which, as you may have guessed, comes with an almost identical functionality with one difference. Baidu has recently implemented a feature allowing users to install the so-called mini-apps within Baidu App.

Does this ring a bell?

Apparently, WeChat’s bold innovation turned out so popular and convenient that other apps have started adopting it as well. As far as user experience is concerned, there is certainly logic in it. You don’t need to minimize your current app and go to an app store when you can just download and install what you need right from within Baidu.

Today, Baidu App has nearly 150 mln daily mobile users is continuing to grow.

For running a online business in China, Baidu is as indispensable as Google in the rest of the world. So if you’re going to develop a Chinese website or mobile app, you’ll also need to make sure it’s properly SEO-optimized for Baidu. Also, don’t forget about the search tools!

Tik Tok

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 500 million.

Tik Tok is a simple video editing mobile app that’s been growing faster than the “Despacito” clip in 2017. Ok, maybe not that fast. However, in just two years since it was created, Tik Tok has won over a monthly audience of 500 million Chinese and is now estimated at $30 bln. .

Five hundred million.

I even googled this number a few times to make sure it’s not fake.

So what else does Tik Tok do? The app comes with a well-designed UX and allows you to shoot and edit short 15-min videos right on the go. You can also edit and replace audio tracks, add special effects, and there the videos with your friends or post them in the video feed.

However, Tik Tok isn’t just another mobile video app. When you open Tik Tok, the videos in the feed start playing immediately and — guess what — there are no “pause” or “play” buttons.

The creators of the app are constantly working on improvements and new features. A month ago, they’ve added a piece of functionality allowing for private video sharing and parental control to monitor how much time kids spend on what type of content.

Tik Tok is owned by the company called “Bytedance” which is known for buying the rivalling platform for creating video “Musical.ly”. Based on the recent report from SensorTower, the app was downloaded 45.8 mln times from January to March 2018.

Tik Tok provides businesses with a unique opportunity to increase their brand awareness with the help of user-generated content.

UC Browser

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 500 million

According to SensorTower, UC Browser is among the top five most downloadable mobile apps in the world in Q1 of 2018. Briefly, it’s a fast mobile browser developed by the Chinese company UCWeb.

There is a reason why UC Browser become so popular among the Chinese. A few years ago, when the Internet in China was relatively expensive and slow, the company introduced a feature that can speed up the page download and save up to 85% of mobile bandwidth usage. When they added cloud acceleration, it became even faster. As a result, most of the Chinese switched to UC Browser and has been using it ever since.

In addition to the data-saving feature, the functionality of UC Browser includes an advanced download manager, an ad blocker, the ability to customize UI, a QR code scanner, notifications from social media, a music and video player, and even an inbuilt file manager. How’s that for a mobile browser?

For businesses, UC Browser offers a special program called “UC Ads” allowing you to launch various content marketing campaigns. It can be used for attracting new customers, increasing the number of app downloads, establishing brand awareness, and more.

Meituan

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 320 million

Previously known as the Chinese version of Yelp and Groupon, Meituan is now a versatile social mobile app for all case scenarios. It’s not only the largest database of restaurant reviews in China, but also the place where order food, buy movie tickets, book hotel rooms, and many more right from within the app. Here is a piece of statistics showing the number of restaurants available in Meituan in 2017.

Here is a piece of statistics showing the number of restaurants available in Meituan in 2017.

If you noticed, most Chinese apps are packed with all sorts of features. It’s because Chinese have a thing for swiss-army mobile apps and because it’s generally more convenient to have access to essential services from a single place.

The main benefit of Meituan for businesses lies in the numbers. The application counts more than 60 mln restaurant reviews and has roughly 12 bln views every month. This makes Meituan a great place to advertise your business in.

Kugou Music

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 229 million

What comes to your mind when you think of music streaming? Odds are it’s either Spotify or Apple. Both of them have won over millions of users all across the globe thanks to great marketing and ease of use. But what if I tell you that there is not just one but several music streaming services with each of them having almost half as many subscribers Spotify has?

One of them is Kugou, a Chinese music streaming service that was created back in 2004. Fun fact — the literal translation of “Kugou” from Chinese means “cool dog”. In 2016, Kugou Music and Kuwo merged with Tencent’s QQ Music to form Tencent Music and Entertainment, the biggest music streaming platform in the world with over 800 mln users. The shareholders decided to keep the existing brands and continue developing the services independently.

Kugou’s business model relies on freemium subscription and so users can listen to music and stream for free. The bigger part of Kugou’s revenue comes from in-app gaming services, advertising and live streaming.

Momo

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 100 million

The simplest way to describe Momo is Tinder on steroids. Why so? Because, like many other Chinese apps, it has a ton of extra features in addition to the main functionality which is finding people with similar interests based on their location.

Oh, did I mention that Momo used to have a competitor called Tantan? Unlike many businesses that would prefer to spend their money on marketing and brand awareness, Momo simply bought Tantan for $600m. So now Momo is legitimately the most popular app for dating.

According to a recent report, Momo’s revenue comes from live streaming, in-app gaming, advertising, and value-added services.

In addition, Momo has launched a special marketing program to help offline businesses promote their venues. It allows you to leverage its location-based service to create targeted ads. For example, when people are browsing Momo in search of a date, the app can show an ad of a nearby coffee shop where they can get a discount.

Toutiao

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 178 million

Toutiao is the heart of content marketing in China (btw “Toutiao” translates as “headline”). Using complex AI-based algorithms, the platform aggregates various sources of content and creates personalized news feeds for its users. You can think of it as BuzzFeed for China with a few differences.

First, Toutiao doesn’t have in-house writers. All the content that users see in their news feeds comes from third-party companies and is picked based on their personal preferences. Second, Toutiao is heavily focused on short videos. In fact, it has an entire ecosystem of controlled platforms that produce media content.

The vast majority of Toutiao users is under 30 years old provides a ton of opportunities for marketing.

But what really makes Toutiao a perfect place for promoting your business is that the platform doesn’t have any extra features like in-app games or messaging. The platform provides nothing but the content.

Yes, you heard that correctly. There is nothing to distract users from reading articles or watching videos.

Tencent Video

The number of mobile monthly users in Q1 2018: 500 million

IQIYI isn’t the only major player on the market of video streaming in China.

In fact, it’s not even the biggest one when it comes to statistics.

Meet Tencent Video — a Chinese video streaming platform with more than 500 mln. mobile active users and 63 mln. paid subscribers. For the most part, such popularity of the platform is explained by the fact that Tencent also owns QQ and WeChat, the two biggest mobile applications in China with a combined audience of nearly 2 billion users.

Similar to IQIYI, Tencent Video is focused on providing its users with original and high-quality video content. In addition to that, Tencent Video also has TV dramas, sports-related content, micro-movies, and news. Seems like an all-around video platform to me.

Online video advertising such as pre-rolls and paid subscribers are the main sources of revenue for Tencent Video.

If your business has something valuable to show, shoot a video about it and upload it to the platform. Even if it doesn’t get viral, your brand will be exposed to thousands of hundreds or even millions of Chinese.

Summing up

These were the top 10 most popular mobile apps in China. As you can see, the market of mobile apps in China is diverse and insanely competitive. Even more so for western businesses.

However, knowing the key market players and prevailing mobile trends can greatly help when starting a business in China. What’s more, you can leverage those apps to promote your own

I hope my article was helpful! If so, please leave a comment and support the article with claps.

P/S — If you want to develop your own mobile app for China, feel free to drop us a line at [email protected]. You can also download our ebook on how to develop a profitable mobile app here:

The Trailblazer's Guide to Building a Successful App

Top 10 Most Popular Mobile Apps in China — 2018 Edition was originally published in JetRuby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.