With smartphone sales in China up 199 percent this year, all those phone owners will be keen to snap up some fun apps. And Chinese developers didn’t have much time for cigarette and coffee breaks all year, with plenty of neat new apps emerging from their smoke-filled offices.
Some of the apps on this list are aimed solely at Chinese phone users, while a few can be used globally and support English as well. They’re mostly apps that I think are significant, or have had fun using/testing this year. Add your own picks of brand-new apps from China in the comments section. Here’s my seven:
7. Weico (WP version)
Sina Weibo, China’s biggest Twitter-esque service, is fun, but the official apps are as about as nimble as turkeys a few days before Christmas. And so the Chinese startup Eico Design is to be thanked and celebrated for making Weico, which does what most Weibo-ers need and nothing more. Earlier this year it hit the Windows Phone platform for the first time. Long before that it also graced iPhone and Android. The app is in both English and Chinese.
6. Changba
This summer’s hottest new app for many Chinese smartphone owners was Changba, a social sing-along app. Karaoke is massive in China, and that propelled Changba to near the top of the iTunes App rankings, with an initial explosion of one million downloads within a few weeks of its launch. In the Chinese version of the iTunes Store right now, it has sunk down a bit to 71st spot.
5. TouchChina ScenicSpots
All smartphone users have maps apps, but when it comes to traveling we’d all like some expert guidance rather than be left feeling lost, staring blankly at a map of an area we’ve never been to before. The travel-oriented startup TouchChina decided to fill this gap – and do it for free – with the great-looking ScenicSpots app. It puts tourist reviews and maps aimed at travelers all into one app, and even includes some audio introductions to some historic places. The app supports English and Chinese, making it useful for overseas visitors to the country. But ScenicSpots doesn’t yet have a comprehensive range of places to see in each city, so it cannot be relied on alone to guide you around.
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