Android may still be the king in China when it comes to mobile operating systems, but Apple China’s new top charts list for 2014 shows that the country’s iOS developers are also experiencing a lot of success. It lists the top 20 iPad and iPhone apps in China over the past year in each of three categories: top paid, top free, and top grossing, and the results are impressive, with Chinese developers holding most of the spots.
Top Paid
Top Free
Top Grossing
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top paid apps in China have the largest foreign presence, with just seven of the 19 coming from Chinese developers. But the top free apps are literally all Chinese; a full 20 out of 20 were produced by domestic developers. And the top grossing apps are virtually all Chinese as well, with 18 out of the 20 coming from Chinese devs.
The top grossing list will likely be of the most interest to developers both foreign and domestic, and it’s great news for game developers: every single app on there is a game. The bad news, unless you work for Tencent, is that the list is monopolized by Tencent; its games hold 13 of the 20 spots there.
If you’re an overseas developer looking at the Chinese market, the most obvious opening is in paid apps, where numerous foreign apps made China’s top 20. That could change next year, though, as Apple only recently dropped its prices, permitting apps to be priced as low as RMB 1 (US$0.16). The company also recently added UnionPay support to its app store to make purchasing easier for Chinese customers. These factors may lead to a rise in Chinese-developed paid apps as lower prices and an easier purchasing process attracts more Chinese iOS users to the paid side of the app store.
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