Chinese research firm iResearch recently released its breakdown of China’s mobile market in January of 2013, and that report includes, among other interesting things, lists of the top mobile apps in China on both Android and iOS. The report hasn’t been published publicly yet as far as I can tell — you should be able to find it here once it does go up — so let’s just jump right into the top ten lists, shall we? (These lists are ordered by the total number of installs, not actual app usage).
China’s Top 10 iOS Apps
- Sina Weibo
- Taobao
- UC Mobile Browser
- Alipay
- QQ Spaces
- QQ Mobile Browser
- QQ Mobile Music
- Kingsoft Battery Doctor
China’s Top 10 Android Apps
- UC Mobile Browser
- 360 Mobile Guardian
- Sina Weibo
- Taobao
- Alipay
- QQ Mobile Browser
- 360 Mobile Helper
- QQ Spaces
The biggest difference between the two lists is the rather conspicuous absence of Qihoo products from the iOS list. In fact, Qihoo has four products on the Android top 20 list, but not a single Qihoo product made the top 40 on iResearch’s iOS list. Apple has a history of not being particularly fond of Qihoo’s apps, and it banned them from its App Store back in early 2012. That time, they were quickly reinstated, but they were banned again in late January of this year and are apparently under special investigation and still haven’t been re-approved months later.
It’s also worth pointing out that not a single foreign-developed app is featured on either list.
Of course, a more interesting way to measure app popularity is to monitor apps’ time usage; luckily, iResearch has a list for that too (combining both Android and iOS):
Looking at all these lists, if you had to pick a winner the pretty obvious one is Tencent, given that its products (QQ IM, QQ Browser, WeChat, etc) hold the top spot — and a bunch of other spots to boot — on every list. But since most of the apps listed offer free services, we might well call Alibaba another winner, given that its Taobao and Alipay apps exist almost exclusively to help users spend money and yet still made the top ten.
(All data via iResearch)
