Despite having a market share of as much as two thirds of the total smartphones sold in China, Google’s Android operating system is crippled by censorship concerns as Google Play, the company’s online app store, is not active in China yet.
Jack Kent of HIS Screen Digest has said that this has opened up a host of opportunities for a carrier operated app store such as the Mobile Market run by China Mobile. Going by the number of customers, it is the world’s biggest phone company and had started the app store for Android operating system in 2009. Since then more than 630 million apps have been downloaded from the store with 158 million registered users. Kent added that since the company does not have the official Google store to compete with, the company is poised to grab a sizable share of the projected $35 billion that the app market is estimated to generate thanks to the abundance of cheap smartphones.
The data services business of the carrier has seen a considerably larger growth rate of 15 percent over the previous year, when compared to the overall sales growth of 8.8 percent. According to a March estimate from market researcher IDC, China would grow to become the world’s biggest market of smart phones overtaking the United States for the first time as shipments are estimated to reach 137 million units, a jump of about 52 percent this year.
According to Analysys International, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 5.7 percent of the total sales in the fourth quarter whereas devices running on the Android OS accounted for as much as 68 percent of the total sales. Kent however estimated that despite the larger sales figures in number of devices sold, the app market of Google only managed to generate about $618 million when compared to the $2.9 billion generated by Apple’s online store last year.
Li Yue, the Chief Executive Officer of China Mobile said that the app market is important to the company as it will drive and promote other business interests of the company. A good app developed on the market would be followed by an increased network traffic which would in turn generate more revenue for the company, he added. A researcher at Analysys International, Sun Peilin said that when compared to the 560,957 apps on Apple’s app store, China Mobile’s store has just 68,663 apps.
