Umeng Report Shows China Uses Over 700 Million Smart Devices

Mobile app analytics provider Umeng released its annual insight report, “China Mobile Internet 2013 Overview,” this week. The report notes a number of features about the smartphone user base in China, perhaps none more interesting than the conclusion that the number of active smart devices in the country, including smartphones and tablets, surpassed 700 million by the end of 2013.

Umeng allows businesses to develop mobile tools and track the usage of their apps with its proprietary analytics platform. Its latest report describes the state of mobile app and game usage in China, including information about overall smartphone usage, device costs, and operating system adoption.

In the fourth quarter of last year, users upgrading their devices accounted for 59 percent of new devices in the market. The remaining percent of devices are now in use as a result of purchases by consumers who did not previously own a smartphone. The number of upgrades increased by three percent from the previous quarter.

The price ranges of these devices varies by type of phone. Of the total number of smartphones, 57 percent of them cost $330 or less; Android makes a strong showing in that section of the market. On the other side of the coin, 27 percent of smartphones used in China cost $500 or greater, and 80 percent of those devices are iPhones.

Concerning app usage, the five fastest growing areas of app usage, not including games, were in the categories of news, health, social networking, business, and navigation. Mobile app users became more interested in sharing data on social networking platforms compared to previous years. This trend is largely a function of social network integration within apps and games because, within the 1,000 most-used apps in China, 46 percent allow users to share some form of social data, including direct social sharing and/or social login portals.

It was only last year that smartphone usage surpassed feature phone usage worldwide. With that in mind, as global population levels continue to climb, the trends Umeng reports about China are unlikely to stop in that country or in others. Smartphone prevalence will likely grow for years to come.