2021 Chinese Mobile Network Annual Report

The number of Chinese Internet users reached 1.1 billion as of December 2021. To learn about the digital habits of these Chinese internet surfers, check out our key takeaways from Quest Mobile’s Chinese Mobile Network Annual Report. 

The Chinese Internet environment is changing rapidly. It’s not enough for brands just to follow trends. To stand out, brands also need to understand consumers, learn their behaviors and preferences, and meet them where they’re at.   

Reports are a reflection of what happened in the past. However, they serve as indicators of trends to come and guide brands in their future plannings for the digitally-unique Chinese market.

The eight main Chinese Internet groups: Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Pinduoduo (拼多多), Sina (新浪), and Kuaishou (快手) reigns top in the industry without surprise.

Among them, Tencent has the most apps in the market, 442, which is 4x higher than the average. ByteDance continues to expand its business, reaching a 13% growth in terms of its number of applications. Tencent and ByteDance are also the top 2 players in terms of app usage time.

China classifies its cities into different tiers based on their GDP and population. First-tier cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, whereas cities such as Kunming (昆明) and Xiamen (厦门) are defined as second-tier cities.

Surprisingly, most Internet users are not located in first (8.2%) or second-tier cities (17.5%), but in third-tier cities (24.7%) instead. The primary reason for this phenomenon is that people in lower-tier cities often have a lighter workload, thus have more time to spend online.

The users’ preferred content also varies with each generation. It was reported that the Post-90s (people born after 1990) and Post-00s love browsing celebrity-related content. On the other hand, the Post-80s favor content related to movies, and the Post-70s spend more time browsing lottery content online.

The Top 10 most-used digital services in China are e-commerce, banking, livelihood (such as food delivery), payment, e-Map, working, intelligent home appliances, socializing, and news.

In terms of the preferred content format, short-form videos are the most popular, taking up to 25.7% of the users’ time online, which is a 21% YOY growth. Ranking second are  instant messaging apps that take up 21.2% of the users’ time online.

People who love watching short videos also spend a lot of time  socializing, online shopping, group shopping, listening to music, and playing mobile games.

Guess which content-focused app has the longest in-app time? It’s not Douyin, not WeChat, not Red; but rather Kuaishou!

In China, Q4 includes the biggest e-commerce shopping events Double 11, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, which is why it had the most online advertisements. 2021 also saw a surge in online advertising spending in Q1, which is a 54.6% YOY growth.

The biggest contributor to this growth would be Taobao who spent 10.6 billion RMB on advertisements in 2021, followed by JD (9.5bn RMB), Pinduoduo (7.8bn RMB), and Meituan (2bn RMB).

In terms of brands, L’Oréal spent the most on online advertisements with 3.3bn RMB, followed by Unilever (2.9bn RMB), then P&G (2bn RMB), and Mars (1.7bn RMB).

The Chinese Internet environment is changing rapidly. It’s not enough for brands just to follow trends. To stand out, brands also need to understand consumers, learn their behaviors and preferences, and meet them where they’re at.   

Reports are a reflection of what happened in the past. However, they serve as indicators of trends to come and guide brands in their future plannings for the digitally-unique Chinese market.