4 of 5 smartphones in China are Android, most with at least 3 Tencent apps installed

Chinese web giant Baidu has released a new report documenting the rise of smart mobile devices in China. The Q2 2014 Mobile Internet Trends (PDF) report shows smart device penetration rose to 30 percent of China’s population, triple the rate from just two years ago. That being said, the growth rate diminished last quarter.

Android’s firm hold on the market has only grown stronger. Baidu says Android has 79 percent market share in China, up from 73 percent one year earlier. iOS, meanwhile, actually dipped slightly from 13 percent to 12 percent. To put Android’s drastic rise in China into perspective, it only held 14 percent in Q2 2011, while iOS accounted for just five percent.

Chinese iPhone users spend 157 minutes per day on average using apps, while Android sits at 142 minutes.

Tencent, the maker of messaging apps WeChat and QQ, leads the charge among those apps. An average Android user in China has an average of 3.4 Tencent apps installed. Baidu follows with 2.8 apps. The rest trail by a wide margin with Alibaba and Sohu both at 0.8 apps, and Sina at 0.4 apps. iPhone users saw a similar trend in the top three with 3.7 Tencent apps installed, 2.1 Baidu apps, and 0.9 Alibaba apps.

While Baidu’s hold on the search market might be slipping on PCs, its mobile search has shown strong growth. The company reports monthly active users surpassed 500 million, categorizing 85 percent of them as “frequent” users. The most popular searches were for books and documentation (15.1 percent), living services (14 percent), and online tools and services (9.8 percent).