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China’s mobile market is officially the biggest in the world – by pretty much any measure. It has more subscribers than any other country, downloads more apps and generates more revenue from these apps.

The country also makes a growing share of the world’s handsets, with firms like Xiaomi, Oppo and Gionee now becoming genuine global players.

Find out more about China’s flourishing mobile economy in this MEF data round-up…

1. China has more than 1.3 billion mobile subscribers, says the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Nearly everyone in the country owns a mobile phone, and 29.6 percent – 386 million – have a 4G connection.

2. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers. As of 31 Jan 2016, it had 828m subs of which 163m were connected by 4G.

3. China Unicom and China Telecom are China’s other two major MNOs. The former has 257m subs, while the latter has 199m.

4. By Q4 2015, Apple was the leading smartphone vendor in China. It had a share of 27 per cent, according to Kantar WorldPanel. Huawei was second with 24 per cent while Xiaomi had 17 per cent.

Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 14.32.015. Android dominates the China mobile OS space with a 71.4 per cent share. iOS has 27.1 per cent, while Windows Phone is at 1.2 per cent, says Kantar WorldPanel.

6. China smartphone shipments grew 3 per cent to hit a record 438 million units in 2015, according to stats from Strategy Analytics. However, the researcher has a different take on the OEM shares to Kantar. It says Huawei shipped 17.9 million smartphones for the number one spot for Q4 2015, Xiaomi shipped 17.5 million smartphones and captured 15 per cent market share while Apple shipped 15.5 million iPhones for 13 per cent. Vivo and OPPO were also in the top five.

7. China’s mobile gaming industry grossed $7.8 billion in 2015. A report by DataEye and Niko Partners says China’s mobile games industry is as big as the US’s, and grew by around 75 per cent last year. It was worth $4.4 billion in 2014. China now has more than 396 million gamers.

8. In 2016, China will become the world’s biggest app market by revenue. Data from App Annie says the global mobile app market is will grow 24 per cent to reach $51 billion in gross revenue across all app stores this year. China will surpass the US this year in terms of value, having surpassed it in downloads in early 2015.

9. Alibaba – China’s dominant e-commerce company – has 393m active mobile shoppers, with annual revenue from mobile commerce growing 192 per cent in 2015 to about $2.89 billion.

Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 14.33.4710. Tencent has 200 million credit cards on WeChat. The firm, which owns WeChat, says the aggregate number of Weixin Pay and QQ Wallet accounts bound with bank cards exceeded 200 million in September 2015. The WeChat app lets users make online payments to brands, friends or utilities. They can also pay shops via QR codes. Away from payments, games is the big revenue generator for Tencent on mobile with revenue at $2.25 billion for the quarter.

11. Alibaba generated $10 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 14 hours of ‘Singles Day’, and $14.3bn over the 24 hours. The special day falls on November 11th every year and is known as the world’s biggest 24-hour online shopping event. GMV is the total amount settled through mobile wallet Alipay across Alibaba’s domestic and international platforms.

12. Xiaomi is the world’s third biggest wearables maker. According to data from IDC, Xiaomi finished the third quarter of 2015 third behind Apple and Fitbit. Its Mi Band fitness tracker was a hit, though 97 per cent of its sales came at home. IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker revealed total shipment volume for the whole sector in Q3 was 21 million units.

13. 3m Chinese iPhone users activated Apple Pay inside two days. Apple launched its payment wallet last month with the support of China UnionPay. 260m cardholders with 15 banks can add their bank cards to Apple Pay.

MEF