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By Star Chang, posted Jul 9, 2011 at 2:44 PM, 1,806 views,

Interesting Report on China Mobile Phone Industry

Baidu, the most authority search engine in China, has recently released a detail report on China mobile phone industry. The research data is base on the first quarter of this year and it tells you what the Chinese consumers like about their cellphones and how they are using it. The data showed some very interesting information, the Chinese still favour on Nokia handsets, they like their phones to be in white color, and the most interested software is instant messaging applications. So if you want to know more about the behavior of Chinese mobile users, click in for more details…

In the first quarter of 2011, there was an average of 16 million searches related to mobile phones each day. Almost half the searches performed involve a specific brand. Besides mobile phone brands, searches related to entertainment and mobile phone software were big hit. Nokia is still the leading brand in China, with Samsung in second place and HTC in third place and rapidly gaining ground. Apple ranked forth place and BlackBerry at number eight. The only local brands to make it to top 10 were Lenovo and OPPO. And the most interesting part is, the Nokia 5230 got the highest search volume in Baidu, Apple iPhone 4 was at second place. This data shows identical info to the previous news we have reported about Chinese users love Nokia more than Apple iPhone. Another part to take note, most of the searches were on Nokia phones model.

Batteries are still the most talked about mobile phone accessories in China, with memory cards and screens taking second and third place respectively. Mobile phone case ranked top 5, this may show that those various types of iPhone’s fancy cases are important accessories in China. When we come to mobile phone colors, white phones are super popular, accounting for almost two-thirds of all colour-related searches. Pink and red phones are popular too, this may conclude female user in China has become the main customer base. For mobile phone software, Chinese users are most interested in instant messaging applications (it is definitely the one and only Tencent QQ!). Mobile PC client management software ranked second place, this tells us that Chinese users still want their mobile devices to be connected to PC.

Themes are the most popular of all Baidu searches related to mobile phone entertainment. Searches related to games increased from 15% to 19% over the past quarter. To take note, the percentage of ringtone and music search were much lower then video search. Finally, what is the most popular mobile phone operating system in China? The winner is Symbian, which has more then 50% of the market, and Android ranked second, third is iOS. Unexpectedly, Windows Mobile has some good share in China compared to worldwide market.

We believe the next version of this data research will be more interesting to look at. Android will be invading Nokia market share, Apple really need something like “iPhone Lite” to compete at the low end market. There will be more white color phones for the Chinese market for sure, and also watch out how HTC competes with Samsung and Nokia.

Source: Baidu via East-West-Connect

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  • http://twitter.com/laowaiblog Laowai Blog

    Not to diminish from the quality or the credibility of this report, but Chinese consumers change their taste quite often. It might be true that they favor Nokia NOW, but it is also true that the number of Chinese phone users who want to buy Apple’s Iphone is growing. Apple knows this and it is planning to build many new stores across China very soon.

    We must remember that, in China, things change all the time. Once Chinese consumers upgrade to 3G phones, they will most probably go with Apple

    http://laowaiblog.com

    • Anonymous

      In China, user experience is not so important to most of the mobile phone user, they care alot on entertainment, they want music, video, games and Tencent QQ, and maybe SINA weibo too, for the recently hit. So any low price phones which can do all those will sell, no matter the cellphones run on which OS or what brand. Although Apple iPhone continues to grow in China, but low-income people like factory workers from countryside, poor university student and those population from smaller cities, they will choose the more affordable smartphones.

    • http://www.freiherrfoto.com/blog Freiherr

      Dude, you’re wrong. Nokia has been top dog in China for many many years starting with the N95. You have practically no idea what you are talking about. 

  • http://www.freiherrfoto.com/blog Freiherr

    Nokia has for a long time said that their main market is in China and it shows. Apple’s elitist iPhone is the most desired but remains out of reach for most Chinese citizens. No wonder Tim Cook has been making his rounds in China to spur up the telcos.