270 Million Android Users In China

An anonymous reader writes "Until now, it was particularly difficult to obtain reliable figures on the results of the Android operating system in China. Indeed, there is no 'centralized app store' and most smartphones sold in the country do not use Google services, including activation. In fact, it is very difficult to know the actual results. The search engine Baidu has corrected this by publishing a report on trends in the mobile internet for the 3rd quarter 2013. It appears that there would be now 270 million active users of the Google platform in the country (more than 20% of the total population). Growth would, however, decrease with a small 13% against 55% for the same period last year but up 10% compared to Q2 2013."

Comments

Not that supprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I was browsing this page the other day ...

http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/11/smartphone-market-share-by-country-q3-2013.html#.Uppjs6kW1dU

It seems that the Android market in China has roughly 80% of the market but the surprising thing is the level of iPhones. Some European countries have less iPhone uptake than that.

Android clearly dominates the market outside the US and Australia.

On interesting figure is that in China there are 1.2 billion in China so lots of room for growth as phones come up for replacment.

Re: Not that supprising

[iamhassi]

The numbers are probably skewed since android can be put on any device by anybody while iOS is only available on iPhone so naturally everyone in china is using android. Even though a iPhone 5s costs more than the average monthly wage in China they're still selling out in hours. Can't ask for better sales than that, the fact anyone spends a month's salary is amazing, that would be like what, $3,000 in the US?

Re: Not that supprising

[AmiMoJo]

Even though a iPhone 5s costs more than the average monthly wage in China they're still selling out in hours. Can't ask for better sales than that, the fact anyone spends a month's salary is amazing, that would be like what, $3,000 in the US?

The link you provided doesn't give exact sales numbers, but it is a fairly common tactic to limit the supply of expensive items artificially to keep them expensive and exclusive. iPhones are aspirational purchases, if they were cheap and plentiful it would take the shine off.

As for costing more than the average monthly salary that's because there is even bigger disparity of wealth in China than in the US. A friend of mine works in a clothes shop over there and some of the dresses she sells are more than a month's wages, and she considers herself to be doing okay. On the other hand I could buy one every day or two, and most of the clients she gets have wardrobes full of them.

In other words there are plenty of people who can afford iPhones, but also a vast number of poorer people who can't and who drag the average wage/iPhone ratio down. The iPhone is just like those expensive dresses that have high profit margins on them but are kept expensive to remain exclusive and desirable.

Re:Almost heaven

[zequav]

Nobody forces you to use the google services with a Nexus, and you can buy one now in USA or Europe. Get AOSP/CM/AOKP/PA/whatever from git, compile it (or get it from xda from someone who compiled it) and voila: (mostly) open source OS with no traces of google. With fdroid replacing the play store, humble indie bundle for some nice games and DAVdroid (available in fdroid) for contact and calendar sync with your own carddav/caldav server you get a nice private smartphone.

Re:This isn't google's platform

[pmontra]

It's not Windows if you use Firefox, Google, Open Office and Eclipse instead of IE, Bing, Word and Visual Studio?

Re:Almost heaven

[AmiMoJo]

As of KitKat, Google search cannot be disabled.

Sure it can, it's just part of the default launcher. You can replace the launcher with any type that you want, with or without Google search. There are hundreds available on Play or via side-loading if you want to completely avoid anything Google related.

Re:Almost heaven

[knarf]

Nonsense. The source is there, anything can be disabled, changed, added. The only thing keeping Android from being completely open is the amount of blob code needed to access device-specific hardware. Google has as much control over your phone as you want, from 'none at all' to 'they know who I'm about to meet'. The choice is yours.

The KK launcher ('home screen app') in Google apps is built around Google search. Don't want it? Just use another launcher, there is one for every need, some of them free software, others closed. The choice, again, is yours.

Re:Almost heaven

[brunes69]

Please explain what you mean by "As of KitKat, Google search cannot be disabled". Disabled where? On the home screen? Yes it can. Google now? Yes it can be disabled. In Chrome? How about installing Firefox or Dolphin or one of dozens of other browsers?

I think you have no idea what you are talking about.

Re:Windows WILL be opensourced

[symbolset]

No. Somebody would great a more secure fork and it would be the grand xfree86 migration all over again. And then there would be no reason to move off XP ever.