This partnership, announced on January 25, aims to revolutionize AI capabilities in Samsung’s flagship smartphones. The integration of ERNIE into Samsung’s Galaxy AI enhances the S24 Series with features like intelligent summarization, advanced typesetting, and real-time call translation.

This collaboration brings ERNIE’s content understanding and generation capabilities to the Samsung Note Assistant, enabling it to translate and summarize extensive text efficiently.

The S24 Series boasts AI-driven features such as real-time speech-to-text transcription, speaker differentiation, multi-language translation, and automated meeting minutes generation, thus streamlining cross-language communication and office tasks.

The S24 Series introduces the “Circle to Search” feature, allowing intuitive searches across texts, images, or videos via simple hand gestures powered by Baidu Search for accurate and quick results.

Chen Yifan, Vice President of Baidu, highlights ERNIE Bot’s potential for diverse applications, especially given its multimodal data processing and personalization capabilities.

Launched in October of the previous year, ERNIE 4.0 marks Baidu’s most advanced AI foundation model, already serving over 100 million users. Baidu AI Cloud simplifies AI-native application development, offering ModelBuilder and AppBuilder tools to ease the creation of customized AI models.

Global market intelligence firm IDC predicts a surge in AI-enabled devices in China, forecasting that by 2024, over 70% of devices will feature AI functionality, representing 55% of the market.

Mini programs competition is heating up with ByteDance building its own ecosystem on its leading apps short-video TikTok and news Toutiao. With Alipay and Baidu following closely, WeChat is stepping up its Mini Program game by going beyond the WeChat interface and partnering with hardware vendors like Samsung.

WeChat and Samsung announced their partnership last week with two additional WeChat Mini Program shortcuts on Samsung smartphones outside the WeChat interface. Users can either swipe right or pull left on the home screen to display the shortcuts to WeChat mini-programs.

Since January of this year, Samsung has already pre-installed this cooperation feature in the S8/S9/S10 series models and Note8 and Note9 series models in China. In the future, Samsung will do so in the flagship Note10 series models and continue to pre-install this function in subsequent new models.

Leading Chinese internet companies are building their own ecosystem with Tencent’s WeChat, Alibaba’s Alipay, and Baidu’s smart program in the leading positions. See the top mini-programs in the first half of 2019 and a quick comparison of WeChat, Alipay, and Baidu.

Is Mini Programs challenging the native mobile apps?

WeChat, widely known in the global media as a super app, covers many aspects and functions beyond instant messaging and social networking. With Mini-Programs launched in early 2017, the imagination of what a mobile user can do on WeChat is infinite.

Can it replace mobile apps?

If a mobile app offers very simple functionality, a WeChat mini program works well as it can be instantly launched. Users don’t have as much hesitation to try a mini-program as they download, register, and try a mobile app. The conversion rate is much higher.

Most mini-programs don’t have complex functionalities due to its light nature. Under the current technology infrastructure, it’s not likely to see very popular mini-programs with complex functions and many features. Businesses should keep this in mind while crafting its platform and acquisition strategies to make their mini-program complement their mobile app in acquisitions.

3 Trends of WeChat Mini-Programs

The three leading smartphone brands – Huawei (excluding Honor), Xiaomi, and iPhone – kept winning more shares in urban China market as all grew their shares over a year ago, according to the Q3 data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Xiaomi Mi 8 was the most popular handset model in Q3 2018. The next three models on the best-seller ranking were all from iPhone, including the runner-up iPhone X.

As more brands followed iPhone’s suit to launch premium products, the average selling price of smartphones in Q3 increased across the industry. The proportion of sales from premium models increased by 7 percentage points from a year ago.

Huawei continued to win consumers from other brands. Huawei ranked No.1 in terms of net new consumers won (=total new consumers won – total new consumers lost) in Q3, followed by iPhone.

Among all the users leaving Huawei and Honor, the proportion of people joining iPhone camp decreased from a year ago. While the proportions of OPPO/VIVO-turned-iPhone user increased.

There is a lot in common in ex-OPPO/VIVO users, such as they’re relatively young, most of them live in tier-1 and -2 cities, not happy with chips and speed, pay attention to other people’s recommendations, etc.

It’s more important, and to some extent easier, for smartphone brands to keep existing consumers compared to win over consumers. They need to invest more in raising loyalty, according to Liang Yaguang, Consumer Insight Director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech China.

The average Net Promoter Score (NPS) among Chinese consumers dropped in Q3. Huawei (excluding Honor), VIVO, and OPPO are above the average among mainstream iPhone. The NPS for Samsung eclipsed that of Xiaomi for the first time.

As major brands keep expanding their user bases, the user profiles began to look more like each other. OPPO and VIVO both had more male users while Huawei (excluding Honor) and Xiaomi had obtained more female consumers.

In the United States, Android lost ground to iOS in Q3. Early sales of iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models in the United States are good news for Apple.

Combined with the continued strong momentum among iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, these sales have contributed to a 5.0 percentage point increase in OS share for Apple in the US – the biggest gain seen worldwide in Q3 2018.

iPhone 8 was the top-selling model in the US over the quarter, with a 9.4% share of the handset market, according to Dominic Sunnebo, Global Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

But in the five main European markets (UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), Android made significant gains against iOS. The Samsung Galaxy S9 was the top-selling model across the big five markets in September. Meanwhile, the newly released Galaxy Note 9 has made it into the top 10 most popular models for the month. Both Huawei (P20 Lite) and Xiaomi (Mi Note 5) made it to the top five handset ranking for the first time.

European consumers are holding on to their handsets more than two months longer than they were in 2016. Huawei has consolidated its position as the second best-selling brand in Europe behind Samsung from the launch of its P20 series.

Xiaomi continued to expand rapidly in Spain and, more recently, in Italy and France. The focused push that Huawei and Xiaomi are making into Europe is causing pain for their rivals across the board. However, it is Sony, LG, and Wiko who are being disproportionally impacted as a result of their historic over-reliance on the ultra-competitive low and mid-price tiers.

In Japan, Apple continued to lead handset sales under the pressure from Sharp and Huawei, both of which has increased shares of sales by 6 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points, respectively. Sharp’s flagship Aquos R2 and Huawei’s P20 Lite were among the top five best-sellers for the third quarter.

This post was originally published on Kantar.com.

China smartphone market declined 15.7% year-over-year (YoY) in Q4 2017 and 4.9% for the whole of 2017 according to IDC.

Apple’s share increased YoY and QoQ in Q4 2017. Although the iPhone X was available in short supply initially at launch in early November 2017, the supply constraints for this model eased towards the end of the quarter. Apple’s ASP increased by 23.9% YoY in 2017Q4 largely due to the shipments of the iPhone X. Apple alone made up 85% of the overall shipments in >US$600 premium segment.

Huawei appears on the radar to compete with Apple in the >US$600 premium segment. Huawei grew in Q4 2017 largely due to the strong shipment for both its Honor and Huawei branded phones in the US$600 premium segment still remains low, it has grown from making up 2% of the shipments in this segment in 2016Q4 to 8% in Q4 2017. With its Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro series being quite popular, Huawei will be a potential competitor to Apple in the >US$600 premium segment in China.

With Samsung’s continued troubles in the China market, Huawei has successfully managed to break into the high-end Android vendor space, although price points of the flagship Huawei phones are carefully priced lower than the iPhone prices at launch.

OPPO and vivo are focusing more on the mid-range segment, with a higher share of their portfolio focused on the mid-range segment compared to a year ago. The reduction in the number of OPPO and vivo models in the low-end segment also contributed to their YoY decline in Q4 2017.

While focusing more on the mid-range segment has hurt its overall shipment growth, OPPO and Vivo’s overall ASPs have increased YoY. In terms of revenue, OPPO ranked second to Apple and was above Huawei. vivo follows at fourth place. Thus, while OPPO’s shipments may have declined, it is growing in terms of its overall revenue.

China smartphone users: iPhone vs Android

Leading smartphone brands have tightened their grip of urban China market. In the three months ending October 2017, the top five brands – Huawei (including sub-brand Honor), Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo and OPPO – made up 91% of smartphone sales in urban China, compared to 79% a year earlier, according to the latest smartphone OS data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

China, a market once overrun with new challengers, is maturing.

“Chinese challenger brands like Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE, and Lenovo were once on the same trajectory as like of Xiaomi, but any momentum they once had has abruptly stopped, with many struggling to get past a 1% share,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Samsung’s performance in China continues to deteriorate, with its share now down to just 2.2% of that market.”

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech carries out monthly panel surveys among Chinese urban mobile phone users to monitor the market share changes of various brands. In China, the panel size is 22,000. Panellists were recruited from tier-1 to 5 cities and each year more than 260,000 surveys were conducted. The nature of the research methodology means it can cover the influence of smartphones sold in other countries ended up in China and avoid the confusion caused by unsold phones stocked at warehouses of distributors.

Digging deeper into the data, we can see that Xiaomi and Honor both realized significant growth in August – October period. Xiaomi’s sales market share jumped to 20.1%, 1 percentage point higher than in the May – July circle. However, due to its previously lacklustre performance, currently only 13.8% of all urban smartphone users are using Xiaomi, 2.1 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Honor’s share was 11.7% in August – October, also 1 percentage point higher than in May – July circle. Among all urban smartphone users, 9.8% are using Honor, 1.3 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Among the top 20 best-selling models during August – October period, eight are from Xiaomi or Honor.

Even though “price” is the biggest advantage of both brands when people making their purchasing decision, Xiaomi and Honor have both managed to achieve higher selling prices. Between August and October, the average selling price of Xiaomi models is 1,640.32 yuan, 321.96 yuan higher than a year ago; that of Honor phones is 2,136.66 yuan, 506.53 yuan higher than a year ago.

It’s a bittersweet period for Apple. Urban China remained a bright spot for Apple, with its share edging up 0.5 percentage point in the latest three months to reach 17.4%.

But globally, iOS share fell in key markets, making clear the impact of the flagship iPhone X not being available to buy in the month of October.

Dominic said: “It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform.

“Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them,” he said.

He added: “As of October 2017, 35.3% of Apple’s installed base customers across Europe and the United States had owned their iPhones for more than two years – up from 30.1% a year earlier and signifying considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base. In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models.”

China smartphone market in Q3 2017; 4 out of 10 using Huawei or iPhone

In the ninth year of the world’s largest 24-hour shopping event, this year’s Tmall Double 11 2017 will showcase:

Alibaba Economy at scale. 11.11 will demonstrate the technological innovation and global scale of the entire Alibaba Economy. More than 140,000 brands and hundreds of millions of consumers will participate in 11.11 this year. This shopping festival will be supported by Alibaba’s global cloud, payment and logistics infrastructure.

Consumers will enjoy seamless payment and consumer loan services provided by Ant Financial. Alibaba Cloud will serve as the core technology and computing backbone to ensure the best consumer experience throughout the festival. Cainiao Network expects over 3 million logistics personnel to facilitate the hundreds of millions of packages that will be generated from the festival.

The number of annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 488 million, an increase of 22 million from the 12-month period ended June 30, 2017. See the performance highlights of Alibaba in Q3 2017 here.

Power of the Chinese consumer. Alibaba expects that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers who visit its platforms on November 11 will have access to over 60,000 international brands and merchants to satisfy their increasing demand for goods and products from around the world. This year, Tmall will, for the first time, leverage its popularity outside China to bring over 100 domestic Chinese brands to international markets, targeting millions of overseas Chinese consumers in Asia and the rest of the world.

New Retail implementation. Alibaba’s New Retail model with integrated online-offline customer offerings will be showcased in store locations across China. More than 1,000 brands will convert nearly 100,000 physical locations into “smart stores” and our channel distribution solutions make it easy for more than 500,000 local neighborhood stores and Rural Taobao service centers to sell to consumers in lower-tier cities and rural villages.

Tmall Double 11 Sales Stats 2017

Total sales on Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival reached 168.2 billion yuan in 2017 from 225 countries and regions, 90% from mobile.

167 merchants each has total transactions of over 100 million yuan. Nike store became the first one with over 1 billion yuan in apparel category.

Top 50 Tmall Stores on Double 11 2017

1. Suning
2. Xiaomi
3. Honor (Huawei)
4. Haier
5. Nike
6. Uniqlo
7. Sharp
8. Adidas
9. Linshimuye (furniture)
10. Midea
11. Quanyou (furniture)
12. GREE
13. Huawei
14. Gujia (furniture)
15. Heilan Home
16. PurCotton
17. Sanzhi Songshu (snacks)
18. P&G
19. Dyson
20. GXG
21. Balabala (children apparel)
22. New Balance
23. Semir
24. Peacebird
25. Jack Jones
26. Pechoin
27. Veromoda
28. ecovacs
29. Lancome
30. Zara
31. ONLY
32. Estee Lauder
33. Hisense
34. Anta
35. Philips
36. Gap
37. Chando
38. Eifini
39. Fotile
40. HSTYLE
41. Vivo
42. SK-II
43. Olay
44. Skyworth
45. Little Swan
46. Meters/bonwe (Apparel)
47. Xilinmen
48. Li Ning
49. Siemens
50. Bosideng (Apparel)

Outdoor sports

1. Nike
2. Adidas
3. Anta
4. New Balance
5. Li Ning
6. Sketchers
7. Puma
8. Xstep
9. Under Armour
10. Camel

Tmall Sales Progress on Double 11 2017

• 1 billion yuan: 28 seconds (vs. 52s in 2016)
• 10 billion yuan: 3 mins 1 seconds (vs. 6m 58s in 2016)
• 19.1 bn yuan: 5 mins 57s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2012)
• 36.2 bn yuan: 16 mins 10s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2013)
• 50 bn yuan: 40 mins 12s (vs. 2 hrs 30m 20s in 2016)
• 57.1 bn yuan: 1 hours 49s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2014)
• 91.2 bn yuan: 7 hours 22m 54s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2015)
• 100 bn yuan: 9 hours 4s(vs. 18 hrs 55m 36s in 2016)
• 120.7 bn yuan: 13 hours 9m 49s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2016)
• 168.2 bn yuan at 24:00

Alibaba Cloud processed 325,000 orders per second at peak. Alipay processed 1.5 billion payment transactions in total, up 41% from 2016, and processed 256,000 transactions per second at peak.

Other E-Commerce Platforms Double 11 Stats 2017

Total orders from 1 Nov till 7:46:58 on 11 Nov exceeded 100 billion yuan on Jingdong (JD). Total transactions on JD during the eleven days’ online sales reached 127.1 billion yuan with over 50% growth.

Netease Kaola total Double 11 sales value reached 4 times as much as last year’s. It reached the total transactions of last year’s Double 11 in the first 28 minutes. Kaola has 25.6% market share in China’s cross-border e-commerce market in Q3 2017 ranking first according to iiMedia.

Total orders on AliExpress exceeded 10 million as of 19:50 on Double 11 2017. It covers 184 countries and regions in the first two hours.

Find out more Singles Day 2017 Insights »

The total sales of smartphones in China reached 35.52 million units in April 2017, led by Huawei with 8.08 million units and 22.8% market share.

The top 10 smartphone brands also include OPPO, Vivo, Apple, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee, Samsung, Letv, and Lephone. The top three accounted for over 50% market share in April.

Apple’s market share increased by 0.7% compared with March 2017 to 11.6% in April 2017, ranking the fourth. And, Samsung fell out of the top five in China.

In the “3500-5000 yuan” high-end smartphone market, Huawei’s sales accounted for almost 90% in April 2017 according to a Chinese mobile phone retailer Dixintong.

China smartphone market insights for Q1 2017

iPhone has the highest retention rate (18.6%) in Q1 2017, followed by Huawei (13.4%). However, Huawei is the top smartphone brand in China by sales (19.2%) in the first quarter of 2017, followed by OPPO (18.7%).

China Smartphone Retention in Q1 2017

Smartphone Sales in China in Q1 2017

Top Android Smartphones

Top iPhone Models in Q1 2017

Related: E-Book: China Mobile Trends 2017

Interbrand recently released their 2016 ranking of the Global Top Brands; Apple ranks first with $178,119 million brand value, followed by Google, Coca Cola, Microsoft, and Toyota.

Technology is, not surprisingly, the most dominant sector, with four brands in Top 10: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung. It also features some of the Top Growing Brands, with Facebook (+48%) as the Top Growing Brand in 2016, followed by Adobe (21%), Huawei (18%), Samsung (14%) and SAP (+13%), and number 2 ranked Google at (+11%).

The explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 had a serious negative impact on its revenues and brand image in China, according to a recent survey on about 20,000 smartphone users by Penguin Intelligence.

45.8% of current Note 7 users surveyed would not buy Samsung smartphones any more in future. Among other Samsung smartphone users, 46.4% would not buy Samsung smartphones in future. Overall, over 70% respondents would not buy Samsung smartphones in future.

Huawei is the top choice among Chinese users who would not buy Samsung smartphones in future by 42.5% respondents. The impressions on Samsung brand got worse by Note 7 users (54%), other Samsung users (57%), and other smartphone users (70%).

Most Note7 users (88.7%) will exchange their smartphones if theirs are within the batch for exchange. But, 7% are not sure and 5% would not exchange.

WeChat launched a new Moment Ad format, native promotional page ads, following the ceremony of Rio Olympics.

Related to Moment Ads: coupon ads on Moments, video ads, minimum budget

The native promotional page ad consists of outer and inner layers; the native promotional page will instantly be displayed when a user clicks on the outer layer:

Currently, native promotional page ads on WeChat Moments are by invitation only. It definitely provides advertisers more space for branding and creativity.

Also check out Nike and Samsung’s ads utilizing this new format:

Apple’s iOS growth in urban China reached the slowest since late 2014 according to the latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech for the three months ending January 2016. However, Apple still remained the most popular brand, capturing 25% of smartphone sales.

Huawei continued its momentum and is closing the gap with its nearest competitor, Apple, capturing 24.3% of sales. Xiaomi, which announced its Mi-5 at the recent Mobile World Congress, maintained a distant third, as it dropped 10.2 percentage points over the same period in 2015.

China mobile internet market is expected to exceed 4,672 billion yuan (US$717 billion) in 2016 with 830 million users, an increase by 51.7% and 5% respectively according to Analysis.

Also read: Chinese Smartphone Brands Accounted for 40% of Global Shipment in 2015

72% China online shoppers keep online all day according to a recent survey conducted by Epsilon.

The top factor that affects Chinese consumers brand satisfaction is brand accessibility whenever needed according to Epsilon. The same survey also revealed that two of the top 3 favorite brands are e-commerce platforms; Chinese consumers are regularly engaged with an average of three to four e-commerce brands.

65% respondents are willing to share their brand experience with families and friends; 60% would share in social media; and, 58% would share positive reviews online. The top engaged brands with Chinese consumers are Taobao (19%), Apple (13%), JD (12%) and Samsung (12%) while the top brands with the highest scores of brand satisfactions are Huawei (84%), WeChat (Weixin) (82%), and Tmall (82%).

Collecting personal private information during brand engagement may not be easy; effective tactics recommended by Epsilon include:

• Bonus points
• Member points
• VIP special offers
• Transparent and clear privacy policies

Also read:  Alibaba Rose to No. 1 Most Valuable Retail Brand in 2015

In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by shipments volume of 15.9%, followed by Huawei (15.7%). Apple ranked third, followed by Samsung and Vivo. The rapid development of Xiaomi has shocked the smartphone market after it was founded five years ago. The company’s posted sales growth slowed down which prompted many people wondering whether Xiaomi could achieve its ambitious expansion plan.

So far, Xiaomi and Huawei have been two most famous Chinese mobile phone brands with a large market share in China. 15 out of 100 Chinese internet users would have a Xiaomi smartphone.

In terms of future potential purchase of Xiaomi smartphone, 18% of Chinese internet users would consider. Some Asian markets also had purchase intention. However, in most countries, Xiaomi is still not as popular as Samsung or iPhone who had already established their brands in the global market. Xiaomi still had room for development, but it might not enjoy high growth rates as it did before.

Also read: China E-Payment Insights 2015

The top three smartphone vendors in March 2015 are Huawei (13.57%), Apple (12.37%) and Samsung (10.15%) according to GfK research.

Samsung’s market share continues to decrease during the past six months while Huawei exceeded Apple to be on top in March 2015.f

The total iPhone sales in China reached 18.923 billion yuan, followed by Samsung (7.217 billion yuan) and Huawei (6.535 billion yuan).

iPhone continues to dominate market of smartphones priced over 4,000 yuan. In 3000 and 4000 yuan category as shown above, Apple’s market share increased from 16% to 22% while Samsung’s dropped from 50% to 25%.

Read more: Weibo Smartphone User Insights in 2014

Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by shipments volume in both Q4 2014 and 2014 according to IDC.

Xiaomi beat last year’s top smartphone vendor Samsung with 12.5% market share by total shipments and 150% YoY unit growth in 2014. Lenovo, Huawei and Coolpad ranked from the third to the fifth after Xiaomi and Samsung.

The total smartphone shipments in China reached 420.7 million in 2014 according to IDC.

Apple rose to the second position in Q4 2014 as its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models were only launched in China in the last quarter of the year.

Huawei was ranked third in terms of smartphone shipments as it had a wide range of models in the low-end and mid-range segment that did well in Q4 2014. It plans to sell 100 million smartphones in 2015.

Lenovo finished off as the fourth with its strong focus on phones worth lower than US$150 while Samsung dropped to the fifth.

IDC expects the YoY growth for the smartphone market in China to hit a close to 10% in 2015. Credit Suisse estimates that the smartphone shipment volume in 2015 will be 498 million in China, however, the growth rate compared with 2014, will slow down.

Global smartphone shipments totaled 1.167 billion units in 2014, a YoY increase of 25.9%, with combined shipments of Chinese brands reaching 453.4 million units, 39% of the global shipments and representing six of the top ten smartphone brands worldwide according to TrendForce.

Read more: China Mobile Marketing Market 2014-2017

Global smartphone shipments totaled 1.167 billion units in 2014, a YoY increase of 25.9%, with combined shipments of Chinese brands reaching 453.4 million units, 39% of the global shipments and representing six of the top ten smartphone brands worldwide according to TrendForce.

Samsung (326.4 million units) and Apple (191.3 million units, up 24.5%) shipments together accounted for 518 million units, over 44% of global shipments.

With the completed acquisition of Motorola from Google in Q4 2014, Lenovo’s total shipments in 2014 exceeded 90 million units and its annual growth surpassed 100%. It ranked first place among Chinese smartphone vendors and third worldwide with its 7.9% global market share.

With approximately 70 million units shipped and an annual growth around 70%, Huawei was ranked fifth in 2014 worldwide smartphone shipments.

Xiaomi, ranked by BCG as the most innovative Chinese company, annual shipment growth exceeded 200% with 60 million units shipped in 2014, ranked sixth worldwide in 2014.

Also read: The Art of Social E-Commerce That Xiaomi Taught Us

Read more: https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/?s=xiaomi#ixzz3PS8kmyKd

Samsung’s market share in China was down from 22% to 12.5% in 2014, according to Silicon Valley investor Benedict Evans on Twitter.

Another tweet from him on Apple’s rising share in China:

Read more: A WeChat User On Average Reads 5.86 Articles Per Day

Apple beat Samsung in 2014, who used to be the best brand according to China brand Power Index (C-BPI) since 2012, and become the best mobile phone brand in China, released by China Enterprise Brand Research Center (“CEBRC”) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The research by CEBRC involving 13,500 respondents (between 15 and 60 years old) from 30 cities in China, was conducted from August 2013 to January 2014 to investigate people’s brand perception loyalty in China.

Also read: China Top 10 Industries by Online Ad Spend in Sep 2014

From the beginning of 2014, China smartphone manufacturers’ shipment volume are dramatically increasing, including Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei. Strategy Analytics’ latest data shows the total shipment of China’s smartphone manufacturers account for 38% of global total, surpassing combined total of Samsung and Apple.

Xiaomi’s market share by total smartphone shipment in Q1 2014 reached 3.9% and 5.6% in Q3, becoming the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the worled, following Samsung and Apple.

Xiaomi sold 18 million smartphones in Q3 2014, and the total Xiaomi smartphone shipment had an increase of 20% in Q3 2014.

Samsung’s market share in Q3 2014 decreased to 25% according to data of Strategy Analytics. And its profit from mobile business decreased from 20% to 7% in Q3 2014. Apple’s market share in global smartphone market was 12% in Q3 2014, which was its first time to fall below 15%.

Recently, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade estimated that in the next 5 years, Chinese manufactures in shipbuilding, oil, steel, textile industry and so on will surpass manufactures in South Korea. Besides, it is estimated that China will surpass South Korea in middle and low range smartphones.

Also read: China Smartphone Offline Market Overview in August 2014

In July 2014, total online advertising spend of mobile phone related brands exceeded RMB 45.19 million ($7.35 million) in China. Among all the mobile phone related brands, Huawei spent RMB9.12 million ($1.48 million) in online advertising, ranking first, followed by Samsung electronics and Microsoft according to data from iResearch.

Compared with ad spend in June 2013, top three mobile manufacturers by online advertising cost were Nokia, Motorola and Samsung.

IT Website, online video and web portal are the top three ad placement channels among mobile brands in China in July 2014. Among them, the advertising spend on web portals exceeded RMB17.63 million ($2.87 million), accounting for 39% of the total spend, followed by IT website (23.8%) and online video (19.6%).

Also read: 77% Chinese Buying Products on Mobile Phones

Alipay announced its cooperation with Samsung Galaxy S5 to offer Alipay users payment by fingerprint.

Here is a video on activating Alipay fingerprint payment:

And one on making payment with fingerprint:

Though it brings convenience to Alipay and S5 users, some users expressed security concerns over fingerprint payment.

iResearch data showed that China mobile phones online sales volume reached 42.8 million and online sales hit 66.39 billion yuan (USD 10.74 billion) in 2013, with over 40% YoY increase. Mobile sale peaked during Double 11 promotion, sold out 4.48 million on November 11, 2013.

Many mobile phone manufacturers laid emphasis on online channels, at present, except for manufacturers’ official websites, B2C platforms were the main channels for mobile phone online selling. On one hand, B2C enterprises’ price war drew consumers’ attention to their websites, on the other hand, Chinese consumers were more likely to purchase “small” electronics online. Mobile phone as the most frequently used electronics had the highest consumer retention. These were the main reasons why mobile online sales went up rapidly.

According to iResearch, domestic brands were favored in online mobile phone selling. In 2013, total domestic mobile phones sold online reached 23.04 million, international mobile phones sold out 19.76 million online.

The ranking of online mobile phone sales volume in main B2C platforms (Xiaomi official website excluded) in 2013 showed that Samsung led the online market with 20% share, if Xiaomi official website included, Xiaomi ranked the top with 23.9%, Samsung dropped to the second with 16%.

According to ZDC China smartphone brand awareness report in March 2014, the number of smartphone manufacturers in China dropped 7 to 98 but the models only dropped 10. Neither global nor Chinese smartphone manufacturers launched new catchy models in March.

Samsung ranked the first in smartphone brand awareness ranking, with 20.1%. Followed by Apple and Huawei with 14.4% and 8.8% awareness respectively. Nokia and Coolpad ranked the third and fourth, but their difference was quite small.

Compared with February, there were eight brands’ ranking changed in March 2014. The top five’s ranking remained unchanged, however, Samsung, Nokia and Coolpad’s brand awareness dropped slightly. Apple and Huawei’s went up a little. HTC, OPPO and ZTE’s rankings all went up by one place, and Xiaomi replaced Motorola to be the top 15 brands.

For product awareness, in March, Apple’s iPhone 5S (16GB) topped with 5.1% awareness, growing 0.5% compared to last month. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 and iPhone 5 ranked the second and third.

Apple had four models on the list, highest of all manufacturers. Samsung, Huawei Honor, HTC and Nokia all had two models on the list.

The data showed that 10 out of top 15 models came into market in 2013, 3 new models were launched in 2014 and the other two were launched in 2011 and 2012. Only one model’s price was below 1000 yuan (USD 162).

For China smartphone price awareness, in March, models with price below 1000 yuan (USD 162) gained a big increase to 19.9%. While models with 1000 to 2000 yuan (USD 162-324) dropped to 28%, but it still had the highest awareness.

Android OS remained the number one with 78.2% awareness, but it dropped 1.3% compared to last month. iOS grew by 2.1 percentage points in March, reaching 14.4%. Windows Phone dropped 2% monthly.

Quad-core smartphone gained most awareness in March 2014, with 56.6%. And dual-core smartphone had 30% awareness, remained the same as last month.

ZDC data showed that models with 5.1-5.5 screen size had 18.1% awareness, increasing 3.2 percentage points. Smartphone with 4.6-5.0 screen size remained the dominant models, but its awareness dropped 0.8% slightly.

Smartphone with over 10 megapixel camera’s awareness increased to 38.1%, growing 1.6 percentage points. Smartphone with 8/8.7 megapixel camera had the highest awareness of 41.2%.

Smartphone with 2000-3000 mAh had the highest awareness of 51.7%.

Case Study

Samsung’s brand awareness in March was 20.1%, though still ranking the top but its advantage was decreasing. Its brand awareness kept dropping since January, industry competition brought more and more pressure on market leader Samsung.

Samsung had 122 models on market, among which 31 models were blow 1000 yuan (USD 162). Models with 3000-4000 yuan (USD 485-647) and over 4000 yuan (USD 647).

ZDC recently released a brand awareness analysis report of China smartphone market in February, 2014. The number of competitive manufacturers in China smartphone market remained unchanged in February, but the number of mobile phones reduced by over 20 compared to last month. For new mobile device, although many manufacturers launched new devices in MWC 2014, these mobile devices have not come to the market yet. There were few new arrivals in the market, and Vivo X3S became the new focus.

Brand Awareness

In terms of brand awareness, Samsung was still running ahead with over 20% awareness, followed by Apple with 12.3%. In February, Huawei ranked No.3 with 8.5% awareness. There were large gaps among top 3 brands, while No.3 to No.5 had closer awareness. Nokia hold a 0.2 points lead over Coolpad.

In the top 15 list, four brands moved up while three fell down. Nokia and Coolpad rose one place to No.4 and No.5 respectively. Lenovo dropped from 4 to 6. HTC surpassed Sony Mobile in February, and Meizu swapped place with Vivo.

Product Awareness

For product awareness, Apple iPhone 5S topped with 4.6% awareness. Samsung GALAXY Note 3 and Meizu MX3 followed, but not so closely. The top 15 devices were from Apple, Samsung, Meizu, Nokia, Huawei, Coolpad, HTC, LG, Lenovo and OPPO. Among them, Apple and Samsung both had three models on the list.  For configuration parameters, 11 out of 15 were using Android OS; 11 models had screen size larger than 5 inch; 8 models had quad-core CPU.

In February, devices in the 1000-2000 Yuan (USD 162 to 324) price range won most awareness, rising 3.3 points to 30.8%. The awareness of devices below 1000 Yuan (USD 162) and above 4000 Yuan (USD 649) fell slightly compared to last month. In other price range, the awareness was about the same as last month.

For operating system, Android still definitely occupied the mainstream with 79.4% awareness. Compared to last moth, Android awareness fell slightly to below 80% again. Apple iOS had 12.3% awareness while Windows Phone had 7.3%, a little higher than January.

Quad-core products were most popular in February; the awareness fell 0.3% to 55.2%. The awareness of dual-core products also decreased slightly (1.1 points), but remained over 30%. Eight-core/two quad-core products were getting more attention, increasing 2 points to 10.7% awareness.

According to ZDC, 4.6-5 inch screen size was the mainstream in February, with 32.7% awareness. Smartphones with over 5 inch screen had 31.4% awareness, representing a possibility of surpassing 4.6-5.0 inch’s. View from the trend, the awareness of 4.6-5.0 inch screen size fell slightly while the 5.0 inch’s kept rising.

As front camera entered the era of 10 megapixel, consumers’ demand of main camera continually increased. In February, smartphones with 8/8.7 megapixel camera were still the focus, but the awareness decreased 1.5 points to 42%. In contrast, the awareness of above 10 megapixel camera kept increasing to 36.5%.

For battery capacity, devices with 2000-3000 mAh battery had the highest awareness, 49.5%, getting close to half. The awareness of above 3000 mAh battery also increased to 19.9%, almost reached 20%. At the same time the awareness of below 2000 mAh battery kept falling.

Case Study: HTC

According to ZDC, HTC ranked No.7 with 4.5% awareness, moving up one place with 0.3% growth. This was a good sign for declining HTC. Recently HTC launched new Desire 8 series which caught people’s eye. This might be a nice start in 2014 for HTC to turn things around.

HTC has 42 models on the market now. Among them, there are 16 smartphones in 1000-2000 Yuan (USD 162 to 324) price range; 10 smartphones were under 1000 Yuan. Only 5 devices were in 2001-3000 (USD 324 to 487) price range, however these 5 devices brought 45.5% awareness for HTC. ZDC suggested that HTC should focus on middle-end and high-end smartphones.

In short, new devices of smartphone giants haven’t come to market yet, so China smartphone market was quiet in February. Nevertheless, it might be the quiet before the dawn: the competition was predicted to intensify next month, and the awareness pattern will change again.

In November 2013, according to ZDC report, Chinese smartphone market brand awareness basically didn’t change. iPhone 5S ranked the top in product awareness, LG Nexus 5 gained product awareness rapidly and soon ranked in top 10 list. On the whole, the competition grew more intense in smartphone market, especially in android OS market.

Brand Awareness

Samsung ranked top in brand awareness ranking in November with 21.8%, Apple ranked the second with 12.6%. Lenovo remained in the third place with 7.8%. Compared to October, the top 7 brands kept stable, Samsung, Lenovo, Nokia and HTC went up a little while Apple dropped 0.2%. Huawei and Sony Ericsson remained the same with October. LG increased by five places in November because of LG Nexus 5 (16GB). Motorola and Vivo both increased by one place in the rank, while Xiaomi suffered the biggest drop in November.

Product Awareness

iPhone 5S gained 4.2% product awareness in November, ranking the top. Two Samsung smartphones ranked the second and third on the list. On the top 15 smartphones list, Apple was the biggest winner with four smartphones. Samsung had three smartphones on the top 15 list.

Chinese smartphone manufacturers together had 3 smartphones on the list, decreasing 1 compared to October. MX3 ranked the fourth, OPPO N1 and Vivo X3 ranked the 12th and 15th.

The top 15 smartphones were mainly quad-core phones, and 11 out of 15 had 4.5 inches screen size. 14 smartphones installed 8 million and above pixels camera.

Smartphones between 1,000 to 2,000 yuan (USD 163 to 327) gained the highest awareness of 24.4% in November 2013. Price range between 2,001 to 3,000 yuan (USD 327 to 490) awareness hit 20% in November, increasing about 2% monthly. Smartphones between 3,001 to 4,000 yuan (USD 490 to 654) had the largest increase of 6.3%, reaching 18.4%.

ZDC data showed that in November, the number of quad-core smartphones broke 400, gained 52.3% awareness. Single-core and dual-core smartphones’ awareness dropped slightly.

Smartphones with 12 million and above pixels’ awareness kept growing, reaching 28.5%. The rest all dropped in November.

Android’s awareness remained the same, iOS dropped by 0.2%. Notably, Windows Phone’s brand awareness increased by 0.7% to 7.7% in November 2013.

Smartphones with 5 inches and above screen size gained more awareness in November 2013, hitting 24.4%. 4.6-5.0 inches screen size had the highest awareness of 33.4%.

Case Study

In 2013, from January to November, LG brand awareness fluctuated between 2.3% to 2.8%, and the rank remained as 14 or 15. But because of new product LG Nexus 5 entering market in November, LG brand awareness went up to 4.3% and its rank improved to the eighth dramatically.

ZDC data showed that LG had 15 smartphones in the market, and LG Nexus 5 was the newest product and the official Android OS smartphone. From November 1 to 30, LG Nexus 5 brand awareness increased rapidly and remained high since 15th.

According to Counterpoint smartphone market research in October 2013, iPhone 5S became the bestselling smartphone globally. Meanwhile, Apple had occupied one fourths of China smartphone market and its cooperation with China Mobile was about to begin. In October 2013, Apple rose to the third place in China smartphone market, behind Samsung and Lenovo.

iPhone 5S though did not cause long waiting lines outside Apple stores like iPhone 4S, it was more successful than iPhone 5. Apple’s cooperation with China Mobile meant that Apple achieved cooperation with all three big China telecom enterprises. Apple would very likely to rank the first in China smartphone market in December 2013, or January in 2014.

China Mobile announced that there would be 10 million to 40 million iPhone sold through China Mobile in 2014.

Samsung still occupied the top 5 mobile devices  in China market in October 2013. HTC jumped to sixth with T328, which was the biggest surprise. HTC One ranked the 18th, climbing up a little bit. Xiaomi had four types of mobile devices in top 15, continuing its excellent performance in China market.

Besides, MX2, Google Nexus 7, Huawei C8813 were still hot mobile devices in top 20 list.

Since the launch of iPhone 5S/5C, according to Canalys, Apple surpassed Chinese manufacturers ZTE and MIUI to rank the fifth in China smartphone market in Q3 2013.

Nicole Peng, Research Director of Canalys China, said that in Q3, iPhone shipment increased by 32% quarterly, the total market share reached 6%.

However, Apple’s competitor Samsung’s shipment increased more than 100%, and its market share reached 21% in China. iPhone’s new 5S and 5C were launched on September 20, so the statistics in Q3 could not completely reflect Apple’s market performance.

Lenovo ranked the second with 13% in Q3 2013, followed by Coolpad with 11%. Huawei ranked the fourth with 9% market share. ZTE dropped to the seventh with 5%.

According to a research by Umeng, a localized Chinese mobile app analysis group offering analytical tools and services to app developers, active android devices in September didn’t change too much. Top 10 devices were all from Samsung and MIUI.

Total top 12 active android devices occupied 19.234% of the total in September 2013. Besides, the top 3 fastest growing devices in September were Huawei C8815, OPPO R823T, Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8.

And the active iOS devices are shown above. iPhone 4 ranked top with 28.5%.

According to ZDC report, Samsung occupied 21% market share of brands awareness, ranking the first in September 2013. Followed by Apple, with 14% share. Lenovo ranked the third, a little ahead of Nokia. 

Compared to August, Apple had a big growth, hitting 14%. Samsung, Nokia and Lenovo’s brands awareness all dropped in comparison with August.

Different price ranges had different brand awareness. Affected by Apple and Samsung’s high price smartphones, smartphone brands awareness above 3000 yuan (USD 490) reached 31.9%, 6.4% more than that of August. Brands awareness of  below 3000 yuan smartphones all dropped slightly.

In September, Android smartphones got a dominantly 78% brands awareness, but dropped a little in comparison with last month. iOS’s brands awareness increased to 14%, which led to the drop of android system’s brands awareness.

From the perspective of camera resolution, smartphones with 8/8.1 million pixels and 12 million and above pixels’ brands awareness kept going up, gained 51.9% and 24.2% in September.

In September, quad-core smartphones obtained most brands awareness, with 46.3%, decreasing 1.2% compared to August. Dual-core and eight-core smartphones brands awareness increased a little.

Large screen smartphones’ brands awareness remained fast growing rate. Though screen size between 4.6-5.0 inches had the highest share of 33.8% in September, it decreased by 2.8% compared with last month. However, 5.0 inches and above smartphones went up by 4.5%, reaching 17.2% in September. Besides, due to the launch of iPhone 5S and 5C with 4.0 inches screen size, 3.6-4.0 inches screen smartphone’s brands awareness grew by 4%.

ZDC, which is ZOL Data Center, released a report on Chinese netizen camera phone user behavior in 2013. This report was based on a survey on ZOL, it collected 1,260 responses and received 1,248 effective responses.

Key Findings:

• 95.4% Chinese netizen had mobile phones.
• 96.3% Chinese netizen had smartphones.
• Android users reached 70%, followed by iOS users
• Samsung occupied 19.1% market share by volume, followed by iPhone and HTC.
• Dual Camera phone users occupied 70% market share by volume, 8/8.1/8.7 million pixels users reached 40%.
• 90% interviewers said they used mobile phone to take photos in daily life. 59.7% would choose camera when travelling.
• Almost 60% said they would use mobile phone to take photos of people, while for scene, plant and animal, more people would use camera than mobile.
• The major reason for taking photos with mobile was because mobile could take photo anytime anywhere.
• High quality and high resolution was the main reason why people used camera.
• Most people use mobile to take photos three or four times a week.
• Interviewers ages were mainly between 26-35, with 40%. 20% of interviewers were students, and 60.1% of students were college students.

According to Taobao and other distribution channels, Nokia’s market share by volume was over 10% in September 2013. In 2013, Lumia series sold out 4.4 million in quarter one, 5.6 million in quarter two, and 7.2 million in quarter three.

In September 2013, Nokia feature phone 1050 ranked top in Taobao, with 47,230 phones sold out weekly. Besides, Lumia 520 ranked the 11th with 2,873 sales volume. In Tmall, one big mobile phone seller said Nokia feature phone sold out 1,000 monthly.

However, the market prospect is still not promising. How Nokia would compete with Samsung and iPhone in cities such as Shenzhen remains a question. In low price smartphone market, Chinese manufacturers are very competitive.

In 2012, Nokia hit lower bottom. Later, it began bouncing up. WP 8 operating system became mature, and Nokia built up its product line. WP 8 market share is still very small, but it has the potential to grow in the future. In 2013, Nokia’s performance was generally higher than expectation.

According to d.cn report, Samsung topped in total android devices sold in August 2013. Top 7 android devices were all Samsung. However, there were 4 Xiaomi devices that ranked in the top 20. Besides, Huawei and Meizu were also on the list.

Nexus 7 , a Google tablet, ranked the 20th, which showed users recognition of Google products. 

Jelly Bean, code name for android operating system version 4.1.x and 4.2.x, occupied the largest market share with 40.5% in August 2013. About 33.1% used version 2.3 and version 2.3.2.