Who are China’s mobile web users?

Photo by 俊玮 戴

China’s mobile internet is massive: mobile web users have long since outnumbered PC internet users, and by some estimates their number is now closing in on a billion. But who are all those people? A new report from Chinese market research firm QuestMobile has shed some light on China’s mobile internet demographics.

Gender

First of all, China’s mobile web internet is mostly dudes: 57.4 percent of China’s mobile web users are men, while just 42.6 percent are women. Interesting, the male majority has increased since December 2014, when men made up just under 56 percent of China’s mobile web. Moreover, China’s well-documented gender gap doesn’t explain the discrepancy, as the breakdown of China’s general population is closer to 52 percent male, 48 percent female.

Drilling deeper into the data, though, QuestMobile found that handset choice was also significantly influenced by gender in some cases. Users of Letv’s Superphone, for example, were virtually all (more than 92 percent) male. Other Chinese domestic smartphone startups’ models also skewed male: users of the Xiaomi Mi 4, the Meizu Note 2, and the Smartisan T1 were all heavily-male skewed. In contrast, users of the Meitu 2 were almost all (more than 86 percent) female. Other phones like the Galaxy Note 2 and the Oppo R7 also skewed female.

Unsurprisingly, there were also demographic differences in terms of app usage. While many types of apps saw similar usage among both men and women, QuestMobile found that men were a lot more likely to use utility and news apps, and women were more likely to spend their time on photo, shopping, beauty, and maternity apps.

Age

The age breakdown of China’s mobile web users is not at all surprising: China’s mobile web users skew young.

But interestingly, the hottest phone model among young people turns out to be women’s favorite phone: the Meitu 2. None of the other models QuestMobile looked at had as big a chunk of its users coming from the youngest age bracket: over 40 percent of Meitu 2 users were under 25.

One app to rule them all

There’s a ton of data in the full report, but seasoned China-watchers won’t be shocked to hear that one app stands out from the rest. Whether you’re talking Android or iOS, and whether you’re talking daily active users or monthly active users or time spent in-app, it doesn’t matter: WeChat is the winner in all categories by a country mile. In fact, the only other app that comes close to touching WeChat’s dominance is Tencent’s other mobile social app, QQ.

(Source: Sina Tech)