Chinese mobile internet firm 91Mobile recently launched a report on 4Q mobile app development trends in China. 91Mobile boasts two of China’s most popular distribution platforms for Android-based apps, 91 Assistant and HiMarket, which acted as the basis for the underlying data in the report. The number of apps launched per month on 91 Mobile’s platforms broke 40,000 from August 2012, and has risen ever since. In the second half of 2012, there were roughly 250k types of apps launched on 91 Mobile, roughly 19% of which were game apps.
The broad-based e-commerce promotions of 4Q12 seem to have driven significantly the downloading of mobile commerce apps. Weekly downloads for mobile commerce apps remained roughly 1.6m from late October to the end of 2012. The popularity of mobile commerce meanwhile in turn boosted the downloads of mobile payment apps, which saw similar trends with mobile commerce apps.
In terms of game categories, leisure / board games remained the biggest category, representing ~51% of overall games launched.
Among non-game apps, UI beautification/wallpaper apps were the most popular category, representing ~28% of total non-game apps.
The trend suggests that mobile video and mobile commerce have become increasingly popular among Chinese internet population. 91 Mobile expects mobile maps and navigation apps to offer more lifestyle service solutions in the future, becoming important LBS-based local service platforms.