The GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai, will be held 28 June – 1 July 2017 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC).

First and foremost, we are continually working to expand and enhance our attendees’ experience at Mobile World Congress Shanghai,

said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA.

Along with event favourites such as the Innovation City and 4YFN, we’re excited to present additional event feature areas that highlight current and future developments in mobile, such as drones, AR/VR and retail, among many others.

First Summit Speakers Confirmed

For 2017, the Mobile World Congress Shanghai conference program will run for three days and will be held in Hall W3 of SNIEC. In addition to the keynote sessions, the conference incorporates 12 focused summits that will explore the latest industry trends, from connected cars to network evolution to augmented reality/virtual reality and more.

Wednesday, 28 June

Data Security Summit

• Chris Blundell, Partner, Head of TMT, Brunswick Group
• Liz Brandt, CEO, Ctrl-Shift

MMIX Asia Summit

• Neeraj Roy, Managing Director and CEO, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.
• Yaron Jacobs, CEO, LKF Media Ltd.

Operator Evolution Strategies Summit

• Cao Desheng, Director General, China Transport Telecommunications & Information Center
• Alice Ramos, Group Head for Development, PLDT

Transforming Industries Summit

• James Sha, Assistant Vice President, Acer Inc.
• TS Anil, Head of Global Product Solutions, Visa

Thursday, 29 June

Digital Consumer Summit

• Ivan Chan, Managing Director and Transformation Lead, Greater China, Accenture Digital
• Anisha Singh, Founder and CEO, mydala.com

Global Device Summit

• Hasan Aula, Group CEO, Erajaya
• Jian (Gina) Qiao, SVP and Co-President MDB, Lenovo

Internet of Things (IoT) Summit

• Chris Penrose, Senior Vice President, AT&T
• Leopold Beer, President, APAC, Bosch Sensortec

Network Evolution Summit

• Masanori Kondo, Deputy Secretary General, APT
• Alex Jinsung Choi, Chairman, Telecom Infra Project

Friday, June 30

Connected Vehicle Summit

• Mario Weltermann, Head of Innovation China, Audi
• Dino Flore, Director General, 5GAA

Enterprise & The Cloud Summit

• Jack You, Senior Security Director, Huawei
• Wu Jian, Vice President, New H3C

Future Tech Summit

• Celestino Alvarez, CEO and Founder, Adele Robots
• Bill Huang, CEO, CloudMinds

Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Summit

• Alvin Wang, China President, HTC Vive
• James Fong, CEO, Jaunt China

For the full details of the conference programme, including the summits, visit www.mwcshanghai.com/conference.

Mobile World Congress Shanghai Feature Areas

Mobile World Congress Shanghai will cover seven halls at the SNIEC, including an “Industry Exhibition”, which addresses the requirements of business users and will be open 28–30 June, as well as a four-day “Experience Exhibition” that showcases mobile devices, gadgets, innovative technologies and entertainment and will be open 28 June – 1 July.

VR & AR Zone – The VR & AR Zone in Hall E1 will showcase the world of augmented reality and virtual reality, including new accessories and industry solutions, and will enable consumers to experience AR and VR first-hand.

Within the VR & AR Zone, HTC Vive will bring together a range of partners and will also host the VIVE Pavilion to demonstrate a variety of life-like virtual reality experiences.

Drone Racing Competition and Drone Zone – Building on the successful launch in 2016, Mobile World Congress Shanghai will once again host the Drone Zone in Hall E2, which will feature international drone exhibitors, such as DJI, and the latest hardware and services for both the industrial and commercial drone markets. The International Drone Expo (IDE),

The International Drone Expo (IDE), organized with partner EJ Krause, will bring the latest drone developments to life. In an exciting new development for Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the GSMA will host its first drone racing tournament, with pilots from across China demonstrating their skills in “first-person view” (FPV) flying.

Future Retail Zone – New for 2017, the Future Retail Zone, in partnership with Cognizant, will present a unique futuristic shopping experience where attendees can pick up what they want and purchase the item automatically upon walking out without the hassle of queuing and checkouts.

GSMA Innovation City – The GSMA Innovation City will once again take center stage in the Mobile World Congress Shanghai exhibition, located alongside the conference program in Hall W3. Attendees will be immersed in technology-led experiences delivered by a host of partners, illustrating how mobile-connected products and services are improving the daily lives of citizens,

Attendees will be immersed in technology-led experiences delivered by a host of partners, illustrating how mobile-connected products and services are improving the daily lives of citizens, enterprises, and governments. Confirmed partners include Guiyang City Government, HID Asia Pacific, Huawei, KT Corporation, Lenovo, myFC, PayPal,

Confirmed partners include Guiyang City Government, HID Asia Pacific, Huawei, KT Corporation, Lenovo, myFC, PayPal, Qvantel and SI-TECH.The Innovation City will also include the GSMA Members Pavilion, which highlights how the GSMA supports its members in driving innovation, with a focus on key programs such as Internet of Things, Future Networks, and Identity.

The Pavilion will also underscore the mobile industry’s leadership role in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

4 Years From Now (4YFN) – 4YFN will return to MWC Shanghai in Hall W2, providing a platform that enables start-ups, investors and corporations to connect and launch new ventures together.

This year, 4YFN will recruit 150 innovative start-ups who will have the chance to compete in the 4YFN Shanghai Awards 2017 for the best innovative project. Companies confirmed to exhibit in 4YFN are Daegu Technopark, Hong Kong Cyberport, the Institute for Information Industry and Qualcomm Technologies, as well as a delegation of 20 company representatives from Spain.

Newly Confirmed Exhibitors, Sponsors and Partners

In addition to the event features, GSMA announced several newly confirmed exhibitors and sponsors for Mobile World Congress Shanghai, including Channel VAS, Daimler, IDT, Institute for Information Industry, Qvantel, Samsung Electronics System LSI Business, SaneChips, Verizon and vivo, among others.

Companies including BiTech, China Smart City Technology, Onkyo, Snasi Electronics, The9 Education and Tiansec have confirmed their participation in the Smart City Expo at Mobile World Congress Shanghai.

The GSMA also announced that QQ.com has been confirmed as an Official Media Partner, joining Mobile World Live. Strategic Media Partners include C114, CCIDcom and Communications World.

Registration to attend Mobile World Congress Shanghai is now open.

China social media users maintained a rapid growth across all age groups in 2015 according to Kantar. The most popular social media was WeChat, Qzone and Weibo.

50.9% Chinese internet users used social media in 2015 with an increase of 16.9 percentage points compared with 2014. Users aged between 16 to 25 years old were the driving force and the penetration rate reached 71.5% in 2015.

China social media users increased largely in 2015. Social media between 35 to 45 years old grew with an increase of more than 20% in 2015 and users above 55 years old doubled in penetration rate.

WeChat (75.9%) was still the most popular social media in 2015, followed by Qzone (50.5%) and Weibo (35.0%). Monthly active users of Weibo in December 2015 grew by 34% year over year to 236 million and 83% of which were mobile users according to Weibo.

481.5 million people who accounted for 35.4% of the total Chinese population were estimated to visit social media at least once a month according to eMarterter.

Also read: China Social Media Users Insights in 2015

China will remain the world’s largest advertising market in 2016 according to This Year, Next Year report by GroupM. GroupM predicts the growth rate of China’s advertising market will decline from predicted 8.7% to 7.8% this year and will drop slightly from predicted 9.6% to 9.1% in 2016.

Global ad spends will grow by 3.4% to US$17 billion this year and increase to US$22 billion at an annual growth rate of 4.5%, both lower compared to data released this year earlier (4.0% in 2015 and 4.8% in 2016).

Brazil, Russia, China and India are expected to account for 23% of global advertising spends in 2016. This ratio has been increasing steadily since 2000 and is expected to increase one percentage point every year till 2020.

The growth rate of Indian advertising market will be predicted to increase by 2 percentage points to 15% in 2016. Ad spends in Russia will be 2% growth next year after experiencing a short-time sharp recession in 2015. Brazil will decline by 2 percentage points to 7% in ad appends in 2016 as continuous shrinking in the unemployment and household expenditure.

The Euro region accounts for only 11% of total global advertising spends currently. French advertising spends are expected to maintain zero growth in 2016. Ad spends growth rates in Germany and Italy are expected to increase by only 1% to 2%. The United Kingdom has become the world’s mature advertising market with the fastest growth rate and is expected to be the third largest contributor to the global advertising market.

China’s traditional advertising spends have declined in recent years by and large while it declined 7.3% as of 30 September this year out of expectation. In terms of media types, the advertising budget tends to shift to digital media.

Digital global advertising spends is expected to grow by 14% in 2016, accounting for 31% of global advertising spends as GroupM predicted. Digital ad spending growth will slow down next year compared to forecasting 17% growth rate in 2015, however, it will still maintain a strong growth momentum.

Also read: China Social Media Marketing Trends in 2015

The advertising business admanGo’s survey data shows that internet advertising accounts for only 14% of total advertising spend in Hong Kong in Q3 2015.

Most online advertising were on PC or laptops in Hong Kong while only 4% targeting the mobile devices. TV advertising accounted for 30% of the overall advertising spend, newspapers 30%, and magazines 9%. 39% advertising is focused on print, higher than the overall China’s advertising on print media.

China’s online advertising is expected to account for 43.7% of the entire advertising market, 23.7% from mobile. Print media advertising accounta for 9.0%, TV 29.3% which are declining year after year predicted by eMarketer. And the total advertising market in Hong Kong is estimated to increase by 6.2% compared to last year with the fastest growth from online adverting according to ZenithOptimedia.

Also read: China Social Media Marketing Trends in 2015

Despite the continuous weak growth and even decline in smartphone sales in China, major domestic mobile phone manufacturers still set a “big leap” of shipping target in H1 2015. Although foreign brands iPhone and Samsung still held a large market share, domestic brands as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi and TCL etc. all set their phone sales volume at 100 million units.

In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by total shipments volume of 15.9%, followed by Huawei (15.7%). Apple ranked third, followed by Samsung and Vivo.

China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, the three Chinese telecommunications companies accounted for 90% of the market.

4G network penetrated quickly into Chinese people’s life while users accessing to the internet through Wi-Fi accounted for 52%, mainly because of the high data charges of 4G network.

25% China mobile internet users on average opened less than 5 apps per day while over 60% would use less than 10 apps. Only 2.9% users would open more than 20 apps in one day. Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu still led China’s mobile internet market.

Among the top 20 mobile apps by total number of monthly average users, seven apps were from by Tencent. And among all the mobile apps in China in July 2015, WeChat and QQ ranked first with the monthly average users of 556.48 million and 424.28 million respectively.

WeChat and QQ were the social communication platforms with the highest penetration rate. Among the usage of the top 20 apps, users spent about 27% of the total apps usage time on WeChat and QQ. Search engine, video, and music player apps were also popular among mobile internet users.

Tencent held a strong position in the mobile social platform. Mobile internet users spent more time on WeChat compared with QQ; however among the post-00s, QQ was the major communication tool.

In the mobile video player market, Tencent, iQIYI and Youku led the market, with fierce competition and little gap of MAU (monthly active users) and total usage.

In the mobile music player market, Kugou music undoubtedly took the lead, followed by QQ Music and Kuwo Music.

Tencent News enjoyed a large share in China’s news apps market while Toutiao was in the process of fast penetration. Toutiao and Tencent News were quite close in total usage time. The daily usage of Toutiao was even twice that of Tencent News .

Offers from China online travel providers such as Ctrip and Qunar have extended to provide more on “things to do” in travel destinations. China online travel providers have also expanded to provide lifestyle offers such as food delivery, movie ticketing and car renting. In H1 2015, Ctrip and Qunar continued the growth momentum, which contributed to the tourism market of China.

Resulting from the convenience of online banking and online payment, mobile online banking apps developed quickly. China Construction Bank ranked first with monthly average usage of 2.32%.

China became the largest e-commerce market since 2014. About 53% users were women in 2015. Taobao held an unaltered position in the online e-commerce market, followed by JD and Vipshop.

In the mother care market, Beibei ranked first with an overwhelming advantage, whose monthly average usage was more the sum of other four apps.

Competition was fierce in the  cross-border hopping market, and Red ranked first in H1 2015 with a market share of 0.19%.

Meituan still ranked top on the group-buying apps in H1 2015, followed by Dianping and Nuomi while Ele continued to compete and was expected to be competitive to Meituan in the monthly average usage.

Meituan and Ele dominate the food delivery market. Ele led the market in Beijing and Shanghai while Meituan held an obvious advantage in other cities. Beijing made up of nearly 10% of the total food delivery share.

Car calling market was basically shared by Didi, Kuaidi and Uber. Although Uber China made much effort in the localization of Uber, the number of daily average users was only one third that of Didi Cars/Kuaidi One.

WeChat payment has gradually been adopted by more users. Many apps supported payments by WeChat. Didi and Meituan were first two apps that used WeChat payment as the primary payment method.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015

China users’ time spent on digital media has exceeded that on traditional media in 2015. Digital media is the largest media by ad revenue; online ad revenue will continue to grow, especially mobile ad revenues.

According to eMarketer, China internet users on average spend over 6 hours 8 minutes on media per day, of which over 3 hours on social media, 2 hours 40 minutes on TV, 11 minutes on  radio, 10 minutes on newspaper, and only 1 minute on magazine. 94.8% users over 18 years old watch television while spending less time is spent. 46% users use the internet (PC), 43.1% use smartphones, and 42% use feature phones.

The compound average growth rate (CAGA) of print media (newspaper and magazine) from 2011 to 2015 is -7.4%. The CAGA of newspaper is -5.1% and the CAGA of magazine is -7.4%. A report from Kantar shows the number of social media users in urban aras grow quickly from 28.6% in 2013 to 34% in 2014, which indicates that social media gradually become mainstream.

Diversification is one of the most obvious features of China social media, the post-90s are the largest group whose average age in 2014 is 30.4 years old; the average age in 2013 is 28.8 years old, which indicates that more different age-groups begin to use social media.

The number of users in the second, third and fourth-tier cities has increased while the number of users in first-tier cities has declined. The ratio of high education users dropped.

Chinese users prefer to use mobile internet for social media. Most people like using WeChat and Weibo on mobile apps while browsing BBS on computers. And different age level users have different internet behaviors. The post-90s often watch videos, the post-90s often shop online, and the post-70s often read news on the website.

In 2013, China internet users use Qzone most frequently while in 2014 WeChat became one of the most frequent-used mobile apps in China. More original content were generated on WeChat Weibo for the first time in 2014, and the engagement on WeChat was higher.

Chinese users who only read information on social media tend to be more according to data of Chinamedia 360. In 2014, 46% social media users didn’t participate in topic discussion or leave comments compared with 39% in 2013. A majority of users expected to get instant and practical information from social media; and users were more concious of privacies. Thus interactivities turn to be less.

Let’s take Wechat and Weibo as examples.

The average age of WeChat users is 26 years old, 97.7% users are under 50 years old. Most of WeChat users are employees, freelances, students and staff in state-owned enterprises.

WeChat has become an important part of Chinese life. 25% users on average open WeChat over 30 times per day, and 52.2% users over 10 times. About half of WeChat users have over 100 WeChat friends, 62.7% users have over 50 WeChat friends.

WeChat official account is one of the major features of WeChat. About 80% users would follow official accounts, especially accounts of companies and media. 29.1% official account users follow WeMedia accounts, 25.4% follow verified media accounts, 18.9% follow companies, 5.9% follow marketing accounts, and other 20.7% don’t follow any account. Over 40% users want to get information from official accounts.

Official subscription accounts can be categorized in entertainment, health, news, beauty and fashion by content. 42% accounts would interact with fans. Entertainment accounts are most welcome.

Combined MAU of Weixin (Chinese version of Wechat) and WeChat were 600 million as of 30 Jun 2015. Weibo MAUs reached 212 million in Q2 2015. 72% are 19 to 35 years old, the post-80s and post-90s are major parts of Weibo users. Male users made up of 60.9%, and female of 39.1%. Users in South China and East China are more active on Weibo than users in other parts of China.

Also read: WeChat Offers 8 Solutions For Smart Devices

By the first half of 2015, the number of China’s mobile gaming users totaled 365.5 million, which achieved a growth rate of 12.5% compared with the same period last year.

China’s mobile gaming market began a rapid growth in 2012, which attracted a large number of entrepreneurs and investors owing. According to some experts, a successful mobile game costs 3 million yuan in research and development while gained 10 times profit for several months.

However, China’s large mobile gaming companies had a tendency to join forces together and caused greater pressure to small and medium sized developers. H1 2015 reached 20.93 billion yuan in the mobile gaming market with YoY growth of 67.2% and QoQ of 21.9%, and it is expected to generate more than 40 billion yuan.

Many considerable problems existed in China mobile gaming market, both home and domestic. For example, in China about 66% users would lose interests within only 24 hours after first access, and only 1% to 3% were willing to experience more with in-app payment; about 75% mobile gaming apps require promotion, adding more costs to companies; the traditional online gaming market could support an instant communication platform for users while mobile-end could not.

Mobile gaming expanded markets with an unbelievable growth rate. With the integration of resources as well as the improvement of hardware performance, the future of mobile gaming will face greater development potential. Tmall made an excellent demonstration for us: cooperating with some mobile gaming company, Tmall support one-click purchase when users had favorable clothes of gaming models. In the future, more mobile gaming companies would cooperate with e-business companies.

Also read: Moda, Tmall Virtual Dressing Room Debuted

Affected by multiple factors, the advertising market in China in H1 2015 was mediocre which did not develop as expected.

The overall advertising market in China in 2013 showed a growing trend, with a significant growth in the first half but slowed growth in the second half. In 2014, the slow growth trend continued. In H1 2015, China advertising market showed a decreasing trend apart from a slight increase in February 2015.

From different media types, magazine and broadcast advertising spends accounted for a relatively stable ratio. Newspaper advertising spends reduced slightly while TV advertising spends rose slightly. Television advertising still held an absolute leading position in the national advertising market.

In H1 2015, the ratio of TV advertising decreased by 4% compared with the same period last year while radio advertising increased by 9% year over year. Influenced by the popularization of online advertising and mobile advertising, spend on print media advertising continued to show negative growth; and newspaper media advertising spends dropped to 26%.

TV advertising market in China in 2013 showed a growing trend, with a significant growth in the first half but slowed growth in the second half. In 2014, the slow growth trend continued. In H1 2015, China TV advertising market showed a decreasing trend apart from a slight increase in February 2015.

In H1 2015, the profit of China regional advertising market continued to grow; but overall revenue of domestic media decreased dramatically, an 10.5% decrease compared to last year.

In the key television media advertising market, Procter & Gamble and Unilever reduced their spend on all levels of television advertising while the Jiangzhong Group, Guangzhou Chenliji Pharmaceutical and Jiangxi Huiren Pharmaceutical kept a substantial increase on TV advertising. The increase of Xi’an Epanggong Pharmaceutical spend on CCTV and local sateliite TV were more than 100%.

In China broadcast media market in H1 2015, the automotive and related products industry maintained rapid growth which led the market. Computers and accessories, media, and business/industrial/ agriculture market grew rapidly compared with the same period last year.

In sub-categories, real estate, fund, investment, wealth management, and funds market grew rapidly; and some third-party and value-added services, entertainment, and retail services advertising grew more than 50% YoY.

Among the top ten advertisers in H1 2015, most of them were in the automotive and related products industry, which still maintained a rapid growth trend. Furthermore, the top advertiser China Mobile lowered the advertising spends. China Telecom also had a certain level of decline in advertising spends, which might be a strategic plan of the companies.

In H1 2015, medicines, F&B, and cosmetics industries continued their growth.

Many advertisers among top ten were from the FMCG industry. After P & G continuing to lower its advertising spend, other FMCG advertisers such as Unilever and L’Oreal also reduced the ad spend. Pharmaceutical industry advertisers increased spends on advertising compared with advertisers in other industries.

Beverage market advertisers continued to increase ad spend; especially in February Chinese New Year with 32% increase.

China’s cosmetics industry advertising market in 2014 overall showed a decreasing trend, and the advertising spends in the first half of 2015 continued to drop.

In pharmaceutical and healthcare products industry, health and fitness equipment, healthy food and beverage advertising market developed rapidly, which continued the growth in H1 2015 from 2014.

In H1 2015, the television media were still an important channel for advertising spend.

In H1 2015, advertising spend of the pharmaceutical industry ranked first in each sub-categories and maintained a relatively rapid growth; and healthy food/beverage and health / fitness facility also had a significant growth YoY. Medicine manufacturer and first-aid medicine with relatively small investment in advertising declined dramatically YoY.

Also read: China Top 10 Online Advertising Media in 2014

In June 2015, the total advertising spends of mobile phone brands totalled 54.14 million yuan (US$8.45 million). Among them, Meizu spent 10.21 million yuan on online advertising, ranking first; followed by Lenovo (US$0.71 million) and Samsung (US$0.65 million) according to iResearch data.

In June 2015, online portals, IT vertical websites and online video websites were the top three favored media among mobile phone advertisers. Web portals ad spends totalled 21.95 million yuan (US$3.43 million), accounting for 40.5% of the total online advertising spends; IT website 13.82 million yuan (US$2.16 million), taking up 25.5% of the total online advertising spends; online video websites 10.75 million yuan (US$1.68 million), 19.9% of the total. The three combined accounted for 85.9% of the total.

Also read: China Advertising Insights 2015

In 2015, when the total usage of digital media users outpaced that of traditional media, the social media also showed their own unique development properties and characteristics in China.

Businesses of all sizes and levels in China are committed to test and realize the value of their social media marketing. Entrepreneurs expect to improve their brand awareness, and increase website traffic and audience reach to obtain more customers.

Companies were expected to measure ROI (return on investment), tie social activities to business outcomes, develop social media strategy, which were challenging to achieve through their social media programs.

Influence of social media activity was difficult to quantify. Marketers in China fall easily into simply referring to the number of followers, likes and reposts as the only measurement for the success of their China social media campaigns. Engagement (likes, shares, etc.), audiences (followers, fans, etc.), website traffic, leads and other metrics were several major metrics to measure the success of social media programs.

The average number of tools to analyze and report on social media activities had relations with the scale and years of experience of the companies. Some Chinese companies remained satisfied with the data they collected while many companies were unsatisfied with the lack of useful tools.

Although social media enjoyed a large quantity of daily average users, most social media marketing have not been integrated into the enterprise objective. Among all the respondents surveyed by TrustRadius, only about 50% agreed that social media data and analytics would impact the social media marketing strategy, and even less than 25% respondents agreed that the social media data and analytics would impact the companies’ overall business strategy.

Also read: China Advertising Insights 2015

In May 2015, CTR, a Chinese reserach company, announced a new report on China advertising market, which focused on key industries and top advertising marketing companies.

In early 2015, advertisers had more confidence in their industries and companies compared with last year.

The total budget increase in 2015 came the lowest since 2009, and the reduction rate was 29%, which was the highest in recent 7 years. Companies had less expectation for the future market.

Most advertisers popularized products through multi-channel marketing and agreed that building a good brand image is essential for marketing. In 2015, it gradually became a trend for companies to buy direct advertisements from media, and invest more in digital marketing.

In 2015, TV, internet and end promotion would become major marketing tools. Second-tier and third-tier cities, east China, Central China and South China would be key marketing areas; the first-tier cities and northwestern China would cut marketing expenditures, according to CTR.

In recent 2 years, advertising tools increased, more advertisers would choose to use multimedia, especially mobile internet and events marketing.

Provincial TV sites would be first choices for most advertisers, while CCTV sites had less advertising than last year, digital TV advertising has been increasing for 3 successive years.

2015 would see a year of large input in social media, video and search engineer advertising, both in PC internet and mobile internet. New outdoor media, such as cinema advertising and bus advertising would attract more advertisers.

While investing in advertisements in internet terminal, it is always not easy to judge their effectiveness, advertisers must consider all concerned factors before making decisions. More and more advertisers tend to popularize products through several multimedia combination, and like to help build brand image through TV, outdoors and prints. They get a clear view towards each promotion channel, the interactivity of internet, low cost of the radio advertising, which helps them choose a better advertising channel.

Also read: China Online Advertising Market in Q1 2015

The number of total active users of Baidu Post Bar was 200 million in January 2015, which was 1.27 times of Sina Weibo’s MAUs according to the latest report of We Are Social. Baidu Post Bar was more competitive in user stickiness in January 2015.

Sina Weibo monthly active users (“MAUs”) were 167 million as of September 30, 2014, an increase of 36% year over year according to its official released financial results.

According to Baidu Post Bar’s official data, Baidu Post Bar owns over one billion registered users, 8.2 million theme bars, near 300 million average MAUs and over 2.7 billion daily visits. With such large number of MAUs, Baidu Post Bar has cooperated with many agencies and enterprises such as China Citic Bank, Hasee, Xiaomi, Tmall, Jingdong.

Baidu Post Bar users are mainly young people whose age are between 15 years old to 35 years old in China. 71% of them would further search for products on Baidu Post Bar while such products news would affect 62% users’ decision for purchase.

82% Sina Weibo users do online shopping in Q3 2014, which made Weibo rank top among social apps in the world according to data of Global Web Index. See Weibo’s marketing capability in travel industry: Travel Industry Performance on Weibo 2014

Also read: Top 3 E-Commerce Campaigns on Weibo in 2014

Estimated by China Tourism Academy, China would accept 3.76 billion person trips in 2014 with total revenue of RMB3.3 trillion (US$0.53 trillion). With the overwhelming development of mobile internet as well as improvement of social media, scenic attraction social media accounts will have more influence. On Weibo, there are already large number of travelers interacting with travel related Weibo accounts.

Among all the travel related accounts on Weibo in 2014, city tourism boards accounted for 46%, which were the major ones on Weibo, followed by scenic attraction accounts and travel organizations in 2014.

From the three charts above, province tourism boards and overseas tourism boards accounts both had activeness, coverage, popularity and impact index higher than the average number in the industry in 2014 which indicated they performed well enough on Weibo.

In terms of impact index from 2011 to 2014, the overall impact index of travel institution accounts increased from 106 to 134. Various travel institutions paid more attention to efforts on Weibo and their fans on Weibo accounts increased continuously in 2014.

During the festivals like Tomb-sweeping Festival, Labour Day and Dragon Boat Festival, there were most daily Weibo posts in 2014. While during Spring Festival, Tomb-sweeping Festival and National Day, there were more daily searches than usual days in 2014.

Top Provinces by Visits During Spring Festival in 2014

Top Provinces by Visits During Labor Day in 2014

Top Provinces by Visits During National Day in 2014

Here were the top scenic attractions in China during major festivals in 2014.

Take the Liuzhou tourism board account on Weibo as an example, since it updated Weibo homepage as well as service on 22 July 2014, its official account on Weibo had increasing fans. In August, Liuzhou tourism board account’s daily fans increased by 88.6% from June 2014. Besides, its impact index got higher than before.

According to Baidu, during the period from July to August in 2014, which was the summer holiday in China, the daily travel search index on mobile device was more than the one on desktop computers. Besides, in July 2014, the index on mobile device had an increase of 50% from the same period of last year.

Also read: Insights of China Video Sharing on Weibo

Since 2000, China automobile market has been developing rapidly. As of 2013, average sales volume of automobile increased by 19.8% annually in China. However, the growth slowed in recent two years. China Automotive Technology Research Center estimated that automobile sales volume will reach 25.5 million in 2015 and 35 million in 2020 with average annual growth rate of 7%.

Among China internet users who purchased cars online, 68.8% of them bought their first automobile in life while 23.2% upgraded the old one. Besides, most China internet users would choose to buy new automobile other than second-hand one according to research conducted by iResearch and Yiche.com.

82.8% of respondents purchased automobile for self-driving trip while 77.8% for transportation to work.

China internet users’ automobile budget is between RMB50,000 and RMB200,000 accounting for over 70% in 2014. Automobile has been the mass consumer product in China nowadays. 64.2% of China internet users who purchase cars again would choose the ones with price over RMB150,000 (USD 24,140).

SUV was the first choice for most China internet users (36.9%) who planed to purchase automobile in 2014, followed by mid-sized vehicle (33.2%) and compact vehicle (24.9%).

77.5% of China internet users gained automobile purchase information from internet. People around and auto shows can have also impact on automobile purchase while outdoor ads and traditional media have relatively weak influence.

72.7% of China internet users would access automobile news on automobile vertical websites, followed by portals and search engine.

For most internet users in China who purchased cars online, cross-device access has become the mainstream. Desktop and laptops are still the most regular device for users to access automobile information. With China mobile internet’s development, mobile device are gradually playing a more important role than desktop.

When purchasing automobile, China internet users’ top 3 concerns are fuel consumption, configuration and price. For first purchase of cars, China internet users focus on fuel consumption and price while for those purchase another automobile, they focus on automobile’s configuration, safety, space and brand.

In 2014, 29.8% of respondents bought SUV, which is the favored one for China internet users.

Among respondents who bought automobile in 2014, 89.5% of them purchased in 4S stores and about 70% of them are automobile vertical websites users. The way of purchasing automobile online is becoming popular in China as e-commerce is key part of Chinese people’s life.

Chinese users displayed the highest level of engagement and interactions with brands on social media, according to PwC research. And, a McKinsey survey pointed out that social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China. During 14 days’ promotion on Weibo, a total number of over 60 thousand cars were ordered with a total worth of over RMB9.2 billion (US$1.5 billion).

In China, mobile internet users exceeded 500 million in 2013 with penetration of 80.9%. The growth rate of mobile internet users is higher than the one of total internet users.

Compared with China internet users on desktop, the ratio of young male married ones with high education background, high income on mobile device is higher who tend to choose sports cars, imported automobile, and middle and high end automobiles according to iResearch data.

Here is a list of top 10 automobile brands on desktop and mobile device in 2014:

From January to September 2014, the index of replacing passenger vehicle in China continuously rose with monthly compound growth rate of 5.5% according to Yiche.

More online car buyers bought the first car online, especially among freshman for working, newlyweds and new parents. And people with successful career usually upgrade their old ones; family with more than one kid tend to purchase another one.

Also read: China Automobile Market Overview in August 2014

In July 2014, China overall advertising market had an increase of 4.6%; and, ad spend on traditional media had an increase of 1.1% from prior year according to data of CTR.

Ad on newspaper and magazine had obvious decrease while cinema video advertising had 104% increase YoY.

Brands spending most on public transport video advertising in China included KFC, China Mobile, McDonald’s, Sunning ect. And, business building video ads were popular with brands like L’Oreal, Pantence, Pepsi, KFC ect. in July.

Also Read: China’s Top 10 Online media by Ad Revenue in Q2 2014

Sina reported net revenues of $187.0 million, compared to $157.5 million for the same period last year. Gross margin for the second quarter of 2014 was 61%, comparing to 54% in Q2 2013 according to Sina’s announced unaudited financial results.

We are pleased with SINA’s second quarter results.

said Charles Chao, Chairman and CEO of Sina.

Weibo is executing well with strong financial performance, solid traffic growth and measurable progress toward building out a social commerce platform and offering native ads to large brand customers. On the portal side, we are making progress in building new businesses and leveraging SINA’s brand and media influence to capture mobile and vertical opportunities

Sina Second Quarter 2014 Highlights

• Net revenues increased 19% year over year to $187.0 million. Non-GAAP net revenues increased 21% year over year to $184.4 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $177 million and $182 million
• Advertising revenues grew 29% year over year to $155.8 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $152 million and $155 million
• Non-advertising revenues were $31.2 million. Non-GAAP non-advertising revenues were $28.6 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $25 million and $27 million
• Net income attributable to SINA was $16.6 million, or $0.25 diluted net income per share attributable to SINA. Non-GAAP net income attributable to SINA was $12.1 million, or $0.17 non-GAAP diluted net income per share attributable to SINA?

Sina estimates that its non-GAAP net revenues for the third quarter of 2014 will be between $193 million and $199 million, which excludes the recognition of $2.6 million in deferred license revenues from E-House.

On April 1 2014, Sina Weibo renewed its prospectus and announced that Weibo will be listed on Nasdaq as “WB”.

On March 15 in 2014, Sina Weibo submitted Form-1 to Securities and Exchange Commission for financing USD 500 million, half of which will be used to pay off debt and the other half will invest in technology and product development. In the updated prospectus, it is certain that Weibo will be listed on Nasdaq as “WB”, Goldman Sachs Group and Credit Suisse will be lead underwriters, as well as Morgan Stanley, Piper Jaffray and China Renaissance. But the IPO time and pricing range remain uncertain.

The name of the listed company will be “Weibo Corporation”, on March 27, Sina Weibo changed its logo to “Weibo”, removed “Sina” completely.

According to the prospectus, by December 2013, Sina Weibo’s monthly active accounts reached 129 million, with a 33.5% YoY growth. Daily active accounts reached 61.4 million, with a 36.1% YoY growth. Monthly average posts hit 2.8 billion, among which 2.2 billion included a picture and 81.7 million contained a short video and another 21.5 million shared music.

Sina Weibo has lost its best chances filing for IPO in 2011 and 2012 with highest valuation, but now is a pretty good opportunity, for it started to make profit for the first time. According to Sina’s latest financial report, Sina Weibo’s revenue reached USD 71.4 million in Q4 2013, with 151% YoY increase and 33.7% QoQ increase. In Q3 2013, Sina Weibo nearly broke even.

Sina Weibo’s total revenue in 2013 was USD 188.3 million with 186% YoY increase, net loss was USD 38.1 million decreasing  by 63% compared to 2012. In 2012, Sina Weibo’s total revenue was USD 65.9 million, net loss was USD 102.5 million. By advertising, games and other channels, Weibo began to make profits for Sina. The main revenue of Weibo came from advertising and marketing campaigns on the platform.

According to Weibo’s prospectus, in 2013, revenue from advertising and marketing reached USD 148.426 million, threefold of that in 2012. The cooperation with Alibaba contributed USD 49.135 million, and third-party advertisers contributed USD 99.291 million. Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall platforms had growing influence on Sina Weibo’s revenue.

Notably, Alibaba purchased 18% stake in Sina Weibo with USD 586 million in April 2013. The deal allowed Alibaba to hold up to 30%. The prospectus shows that Sina and Alibaba hold approximately 97% of Weibo’s stake, and Sina Weibo’s executive team holds the rest. Sina Corporation holds 140 million shares, which accounted for 77.6%. Alibaba Group holds 34.89 million shares and took up 19.3%. Sina Weibo’s executive team holds 5.42 million shares, accounted for 3%.

Since several sensational news in March 2014 (Kunming train station attack on March 1 and the missing airline MH370 on March 8), Sina Weibo has gained wide-spread recognition as an important media for information release. Because of a large number of professionals using Weibo, though the information sources may be various, Weibo’s self-correction and rumor identifying abilities are more powerful than private social networking apps’.

These public events rediscovered the positioning and value of Sina Weibo, offered perfect opportunity for IPO. Sina stressed that Weibo as a social media, rather than WeChat and QQ alike instant messaging apps. (Click here to check out event marketing on Weibo: How Brands Utilized Chinese Spring Festival Gala on Sina Weibo.)

Actually, Sina Weibo began its commercialization in 2012. With banner ads, promoted Weibo post, Weibo and Taobao account bundling and Weibo Wallet, Sina Weibo has built a complete advertising system targeting brands, SME and Taobao store owners. Insiders revealed that the major clients of Sina Weibo are SME, in the future, it will attract more brands to market on the platform.

China digital advertising market kept increasing fast in 2013. The multi-screen media environment was much more common in Chinese netizen’s life, and the cross-screen integration became the focus point for advertisers.

According to iResearch online advertiser monitoring tools iAdTracker, following are trend and analysis of some specific video, weibo and news media (as “the three media” below) advertising spending on PC and mobile APP. This will help you understand the industry pattern and trend about multi-screen investment.

Data showed that from January to November in 2013, the brand online advertising revenue of the three media on PC client reached 13.74 billion Yuan (USD 2.23 billion).  The revenue rose 50.9% from January to November. The advertising spending on mobile APP was relatively limited compared to the spending on PC, but its growth rate was much higher than PC’s. The average QoQ growth rate of spending on APP reached 25.1%; the growth was 72.8% in July with the help of some leading brands.

According to the industry statistics by iAdTracker, toiletry advertising (estimation) spending took up 62.6% of the three media APP advertising market, followed by food & beverage. Traditional popular industries on PC client such as transportation, internet service and financial service had small market shares, representing a significant difference between two screen markets. The top 3 advertising industry on PC are: transportation with 19.8%, food & beverage with 16.6% and internet service with 15.0%

For advertisers on mobile APP, about half of the top 10 were in the toiletry industry. Marubi ranked the first, showing a mature strategy on mobile. High-end skin care brands like Chanel, Estee Lauder also performed well.

Mobile internet brought new marketing points for consumption goods market. As daily chemicals retail market has a demand for consumer communication and in-time product information, this market seems to walk ahead. The mobile APPs of the three media (video, weibo and news) has very social and sticky users, which matches the potential consumer characters of this industry. APP advertising uses fragmentary time to push eye-catching and caring  discount information or brand story, or even other services. This may be a bright spot in interactive advertising market.

China online video market achieved 12.81 billion Yuan(USD 2.08 billion) with 41.9% YoY increase. The market was expected to maintain a rapid growth and reach 36.6 billion Yuan (USD 5.97 billion) in 2017.

In the coming years, as the mobile client commercialization deepens, copyright contents (TV dramas, variety shows and sporting events) are be introduced continuously, and  user generation videos develop, online video market will keep a relative high growth, according to iResearch.

The advertising revenue accounted for 75% of total revenue in 2013, ranked the first. The proportion was predicted to rise slightly to 77.1% in 2017.

Advertising is, and will be in recent years, the main way to monetize traffic due to the typical media attribute of online video. For now, high-quality hot dramas and variety shows guaranteed the advertising revenue, and contents such as animation and sporting events helped to boost the advertising profitability. Most mobile online video revenue came from advertising, while the revenue proportion of non-advertising ways to monetize the traffic were increasing, as a consequence of growing traffic and deeper commercialization.

The monthly online video user coverage of PC webpage and PC client was 460 million and 340 million respectively in November 2013. The MoM growth of PC webpage user scale was 1.6%, lower than 6.7% of PC client. Generally, the user scale of online video on PC was steady, maintained a stable momentum.

By November 2013, the user scale of mobile video app reached 170 million, up 72.9% compared with December 2012, showing a rapid growth. By November 2013, the ratio of mobile video app user to PC online video user was 37.1%, increased 15.6 percentage points from 21.5% by December 2012.

During January to November 2013, TV dramas always took the most part of video effective length. The share fluctuated in small range but remained above 50%. The overall trend of  variety shows was upward, with the increase from 9.6% by January 2013 to 13.5% by November 2013. Generally speaking, the content structure of video effective length kept stable.

WeMedia published China wechat app developers 2013 report on November 22 2013, the first report about Chinese wechat app developing industry situation.

According to WeMedia, Tencent launched wechat official platform in August 2012. At the same time, native app is not suitable for most enterprises, because it has high costs and few core functions, and it requires frequent app updates while its using frequency is relatively low. With more and more mobile open platforms, many enterprises turned to develop public platform based apps.

The number wechat app developers were growing, many developers made transitions from native app to wechat app. The chart above showed wechat developers type and developing time. We could tell 72% developers were companies, and 43% of team had 6-10 people. 51% wechat developers were transferred from online product development industry, and 49% of them transferred within a year.

62% of Wechat app were free. The three main services offered by developers were CRM, wechat app webpage development and customized development.

Wechat app clients geographic distribution was in accordance with internet development, most clients were from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Zhejiang province.

Sales pattern of wechat app developers was still very traditional, and their revenue hadn’t increase yet.

Only 21% of developers were losing money, income statements of developers seemed good. With multiple services, it would generate more income in the future.

Developers had many high quality clients, however their development process took too long time.

More and more developers were transferred from other public platforms to wechat official platform.

Still, Chinese wechat app developers faced many problems. No developers had achieved over 10 million yuan revenue (USD 16,308). Most developers focused on developing products, they didn’t have enough brand building awareness. What’s more, most products were identical to each other, developers lacked deep understanding of consumer needs. And it’s difficult to do secondary development on exist products. Most developers couldn’t offer complete mobile end solutions to clients.

According to China SARFT, or State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China TV open rate has dropped from 70% to 30% in 2013. The report showed that under the impact of PC, tablet and smartphone, TV open rate dropped from 70% three years ago to 30% in 2013. Senior became the majority of traditional TV audience, even for those who both watched TV and online videos, they preferred online videos more.

The loss of young watchers endangered TV advertising. Online advertising had been growing from 2007 to 2012, 3 out of 6 years with more than 120% growth rate, outperformed the growth of TV advertising.

Online video websites gradually earned more advertising over the years, its online advertising revenue was 3.14 billion yuan (USD 512 million), it reached 9.25 billion yuan (USD 1.51 billion) in 2012.

Although the number of online video users could not compete with TV users, it has high penetration rate in high education and high income young people. And in 1980s, official media had 80% say in reporting; in 2012, non-official media gained 75% say in 20 hot online events.

According to iResearch, the total mobile brands advertising cost in June reached 46.09 million yuan (USD 7.48 million). Nokia spent most on online advertising, with 11.56 million yuan (USD 1.87 million). Followed by Motorola and Samsung.

Portal websites, IT and video websites were the priorities of online advertising. Advertising by mobile brands spent on Portal websites reached 28.04 million yuan (USD 4.55 million), which was 60.8% of all. The second was IT websites, with 9.37 million yuan (USD 1.52 million). Video websites came to the third with 5.05 million yuan (USD 819,000).

According to Enfodesk, China mobile banking total amount of transaction reached 2.22 trillion yuan(359.9 billion USD) in Q2 2013, with a QoQ increase of 56.2%.

In 2012, major China banks had all covered mobile banking service. And in 2013, the competition between banks was pretty fierce, they all had put efforts on marketing and new products.

Mobile banking has just begun in China, banks are focusing on new users increase and using frequency. Marketing is quite traditional, which is to offer discount for transferring money or free. These marketing activities seem outdated and too similar with each other.

In this quarter, mobile banking marketing creation was to increase using frequency, combined with social network to promote mobile auctions. For example, in this May, China Construction Bank schemed out a mobile auction activity. The promotion period was from June to November.

And in new products promotion, banks invest in mobile app upgrading, laying emphasis on security, efficiency and functions. What’s more, banks are trying to draw users attention via social media like Weibo and Weixin.

In addition to a normal version for regular individual users, Sina Weibo has an enterprise version for companies, just like the Facebook Page idea. Sina is also testing a different version for media like this one.

In media edition of Sina Weibo, it has articles section besides the weibo posts stream. The articles are imported from RSS feed and auto-formated and displayed in one of eight available templates.

Weibo posts published via media edition are also displayed differently like this one:

An extra “card” will be displayed below the Weibo post including news thumbnail, headline and a summary. This will no doubt lead to higher click through rate.

This is just a beginning. Sina may launch multiple versions for further attempts on monetization, such as special version for e-commerce platforms like Taobao.