China Drove 40% of Mobile App Spending and Nearly Half of All Downloads in 2018 (venturebeat.com)

China may be slowing iPhone sales worldwide, but Chinese people are driving Apple's App Store business. From a report: China accounted for nearly 50 percent of all app downloads in 2018, pushing the global downloads count to reach a record 194 billion, according to research firm App Annie. China, which is the world's largest smartphone market, also accounted for nearly 40 percent of worldwide consumer spend in apps in 2018, App Annie said in its yearly "State of Mobile" report. (Note: Google Play Store is not available in China.) Global consumer spend in apps reached $101 billion last year, up 75 percent since 2016. And 74 percent of all money spent on apps last year came from games. The battle between Silicon Valley companies and Chinese tech giants generated more than half of total consumer spend in the top 300 parent companies in 2018, the report said. The top company for global consumer spend was China's Tencent, which owns stake in several startups, companies, and games -- including last year's sleeper hits PUBG and Fortnite.

Comments

Stop accounting for China's numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Their market isn't accessible to the West and thus their spending is irrelevant.

Re:Stop accounting for China's numbers

[AmiMoJo]

Apple operates in China. Google doesn't.

There are of course also many Chinese app stores.

Re:Stop accounting for China's numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

the download numbers are as well, probably includes all the 'downloads' of spy apps mandated by the government.

People actually pay money for phone apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird.

It is finally happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Western consumers are soon to be marginalized.

Re:It is finally happening

[jellomizer]

The United States has the worlds most powerful economy. China is second but growing much faster then the US one is.
Our instinct is What is the US doing wrong, we are falling behind.
But the real question is what is China doing wrong to be second to the United States.
In terms of geography China has roughly the same size as the United States, with access to a lot of resources.
Their population (about 10x of the United states) is huge, they have a higher available working base.
They are located next to many countries with large economies, Japan, Korea, India, and Russia.

In short China has the capacity to eclipse the American Economy, but it is still a distant second. So what are they doing wrong, that America should avoid. Vs America changing its methods, just because China is catching up to them. Because if America follows the wrong things, we will just be putting ourselves in a disadvantage.

Re: It is finally happening

[edris90]

How much is enough, how well does the American economy need to be doing for us to not give a shit about competing with other countries? how well is well enough that it doesn't matter if some other countries doing better

Re: It is finally happening

[edris90]

I thought American companies were not willing to pay the price to do business in China. Didnt They just cried all over the place about how they agreed to give China their IP and now when it's time to pay the piper they are freaking out

Re: It is finally happening

[jellomizer]

Are you asking for a Logical response. Then I expect it would be at a point where unemployment is 0%, and everyone has the ability to live the way they want to.
If you are asking for the emotional Response. 'merica #1! we need to show the world that we are right about everything and show the errors in their way.

I personally don't care of the US rank in economy, however I like to see continuous improvement over time, if every generation is getting a better quality life, and the amount of suffering is down, we could be in last place. Because if we are always getting better then things are good.

Re:It is finally happening

[Kjella]

Their population (about 10x of the United states) is huge

Huh? China is 1386 million, the US is 326 million so about 4.25x. They big change is that they realized the Soviet Union fell through worthless rubles and empty shops, let people make money and have nice things as long as they don't challenge the government. It's hard to get really mad when your wallet is thicker and thicker every year, it's when there's an economic crisis that there's real outrage.

Re: It is finally happening

[Anonymous Coward]

a point where unemployment is 0%,

yeah that's when every old grandma is working at walmart

Re: It is finally happening

[edris90]

Employment seems to be a inappropriately short-sighted metric for the measurement of well being of a population. Wouldn't it'd be more accurate to try and measure the basic physical needs to maintain the body, perceptions of satisfaction, and emotional stability of the population? As that's what eventually everything results to.

App guy!

[BlackOverflow]

Where is app guy?!

what you dont have phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

what you dont have phones?

Genius Plan

[SuperKendall]

A) Produce some really crappy mobile app
B) Price said app at $500
C) Enjoy $5k from Chinese cloners purchasing app to replicate.
D) Ghost app, move onto some other app category, repeat.

THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL

[Anonymous Coward]

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL UNTIL YOU DIE

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Eh, I doubt App Annie's numbers

[Ecuador]

I doubt App Annie's numbers. Sure they have quite a few developers who have given them access to their data and so they have a basis to extrapolate, but even if their methods are not bad, at least the download numbers don't mean much. For example, I have a (not bad performing) free & no ads astronomy weather app on the Apple store and it normally gets really miserable download numbers in China (about 1-2 downloads a day), which could be attributed to it not having been translated to Chinese. However, at random days I will suddenly get download spikes. Usually it is something like 70 downloads in a day, with the previous and next day still at the usual 1-2. Last year, there was a spike of 4000 downloads in a single day! And I know it is not legitimate, because I did not see any spike in server access, it was like phantom downloads. I wrote to apple asking to remove the spike since it was bogus and completely screwed up my statistics, but of course they claimed installs cannot be faked, they were legitimate even if they led to zero activity. I searched, and found other people reporting similar spikes.

I have a paid app which is for astronomers/astrophotographers, that one gets 0.8% of my total revenue from China. I doubt translating it would get me anywhere close to that 40%, as I get almost 3 times the revenue from Japan and the Japanese are not known to be much better at English...

I am not saying China is not on the rise and on their way to catch up / surpass someday, but these numbers seem a bit suspect.

Communist China

[AHuxley]

Its not the endless profit centre people image.
Want to do business in China? China does not need you.
They can do any app internally and keep the all profits within select approved Communist party brands.
Any Western brand that is permitted into China will be sharing its tech/methods/crptyo/innovations.
Once extracted the "expert" will not be allowed to stay in and profit in China.
When China has a full understanding of the company and everything it can offer, unexpected and new Communist regulations will start.
The expert from outside China will not get their ability to work in China extended.

Got an educational app? Approval to be gov educational software is suddenly removed.
Got crypto? Dont provide the keys to the gov? For internal security. The service is then not legal.
Got unique engineering products? So will a new factory that's now exporting your product to the world.
Got a business? Expect the cost to go up. Its not a new tax but selective new costs and regulations.

Expect the rule of law to provide clarity to such changes? Expect your permission to enter and work in China to be removed.