The US was the top spending market for AVOD in 2019

Top five countries by AVoD expenditure ($ million)
Ranking Country 2019
1 USA 7,998
2 China 6,777
3 United Kingdom 1,620
4 Japan 1,611 4
5 India 632 5

Source:  Digital TV Research, quoted in Advanced Television, 1st June 2020

Smartphone payment services have 80% adoption rates in China but only 10% in the US

"According to new statistics from management consultancy Bain, some 80% of Chinese consumers used some form of smartphone payments service last year, far higher than a U.S. adoption rate of 10%, reports CNBC.
Broken down by service, the Chinese market is dominated by local systems like WeChat Pay and AliPay, both of which enjoyed over 80% adoption rates in 2018. Cash, bank cards, credit cards and bank apps follow, with Apple Pay listed as the most-used foreign service with 17% adoption.
Gerard du Toit, partner and head of Bain's banking and payments sector, notes countries like China and India are ripe for penetration due to their reliance on cash.
"China and India have been very cash-based economies — that has a pretty high hassle and friction factor," du Toit said. "Mobile payment is a dramatic improvement versus having to manage a whole bunch of cash."
Whereas Alibaba and Tencent offered attractive alternatives to traditional payments in a bid for Chinese consumer favor, India pushed the use of mobile payments to dissuade unrecorded cash transactions and thus reap consumption taxes.
The story is different in the U.S., where Apple Pay has a 9% adoption rate. By comparison, PayPal is used by 44% of American consumers, while credit card and cash boast respective adoption rates of 80% and 79%.
There is little incentive for consumers to ditch credit cards, the top form of payment in America, for a mobile payment alternative, du Toit notes. In some cases, swiping or inserting a credit card into a point of sale terminal is easier than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and tapping it on an NFC reader."

Source:  Apple Insider, 29th August 2019

There are nearly 350m paid video subscriptions in China

"The number of paid subscriptions on China’s online video platforms reached 347 million in 2018 as the market continued to expand rapidly, according to a report released at the Internet Film and Television Summit, part of the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival.
Lu Di, director of the Center for Audio-visual Communication Research at Peking University, said the number of online video users totalled 612 million, accounting for 73.9 per cent of the total Internet population in China.
Since 2015, the online video market has expanded rapidly, reaching 187.13 billion yuan (€23.8bn) in 2018, tripling in size in three years."
Source:  Advanced Television, 12th June 2019

China accounts for over 50% of smart speaker shipments

"China has surpassed the United States to lead the smart speaker market.
According to new data from Canalys, China’s smart speaker shipments grew by 500 percent in Q1 2019 to achieve a 51 percent market share. The U.S. has dropped to a 24 percent market share in the same quarter, down from its 44 percent share in Q4 2018.
Baidu, for example, shipped 3.3 million speakers, bolstered by an exclusive sponsorship deal with China’s national TV channel, CCTV, on its New Year’s Gala on Chinese New Year’s Eve. The promotion prompted users to download the Baidu app, which handed out more than 100 million coupons. The company is now in third place in smart speaker shipments, behind Amazon at 4.6 million and Google at 3.5 million. Alibaba and Xiaomi each had 3.2 million shipments, with both benefiting from Chinese New Year promotions."

Source:  PYMNTS, 21st May 2019

450m people played a CNY game on Alipay in February 2019

"Chinese tech giants reported more user participation in the digital "red envelopes" during the Spring Festival holiday as Chinese zealously snatched lucky money for good fortune.
Some 450 million people participated in the game of collecting "five blessings" on payment platform Alipay to receive lucky money offered by Internet giant Alibaba, up 40 percent year on year, according to Ant Financial, Alibaba's finance arm.
WeChat, a popular instant messaging app by Tencent, another prominent player in the mobile payment realm, saw the number of red envelopes sent or received increase by 7.12 percent year on year to 823 million from Feb. 4 to Feb. 9, a report carried by the Economic Information Daily.
Giving cash in red envelopes (hongbao) is a traditional practice during the Spring Festival, which has been shifting online thanks to the increasing popularity of mobile payments in which people use apps to send, collect and draw virtual hongbaos on their smartphones."

Source:  China Daily, 11th February 2019

China has nearly 100 'unicorn' start-ups

"China’s startup market had a good year in 2018, with close to 100 technology companies garnering a valuation of more than $1 billion.
Known as unicorns, the companies were led by eCommerce and video streaming services, the Financial Times reported, citing data from Hurun’s ranking of China’s top tech companies. According to the report, Hurun, which also produces the annual rich list for China, found there are 186 Chinese tech startups that have valuations of more than $1 billion. In first place is Ant Financial, the digital payments affiliate of Alibaba. Among the video streaming startups, the Financial Times said ByteDance made the list. It runs the Toutiao news video and short video streaming company Douyin. ByteDance, Tencent-backed short-video app Kuaishou, and Meicai, an online platform for farmers selling vegetables, were ranked the fastest-growing startups, with valuations that jumped 400 percent in 2018, reported the Financial Times. The report noted that internet services, medical and health companies, and education were the fastest growing sectors from a valuation perspective."

Source:  PYMNTS, 28th January 2019

There are more than 10m apps ('mini programmes') on WeChat

"They may not be widely known outside of China, but Tencent’s mini program initiative to develop “apps” that live outside of app stores is bearing fruit after it clocked two notable landmarks: 200 million daily users and one million apps.
In recent years, Tencent’s WeChat  messaging app has blossomed into a universe of its own with myriad services that span from food delivery to getting loans. But the Chinese messaging app wants to lock users in for longer — and its mini program scheme appears to show promise.
Back in January 2017, Tencent introduced “mini programs,” which are essentially lightweight apps that run inside WeChat. When you need to hail a cab, for example, instead of downloading the standalone Didi Chuxing app, you can summon its mini program on WeChat in the blink of an eye.
WeChat now has over one million such mini programs, Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma said today at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China. (Third-party analytics firm Aladdin mentioned this milestone in a June report.) That makes its ecosystem half the size of the Apple App Store, which recorded 2.1 million apps in April."

Source:  TechCrunch, 7th November 2018

Singles Day generated over $30bn in sales

"Another year, another gross merchandise volume record for Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.
At the stroke of midnight, when the rolling counter stopped, 2018 GMV was RMB213.5 billion ($30.8 billion), 27% higher than last year’s RMB168.3 billion. As 11.11 wore on, milestones from the previous 10 years fell, one by one. Just after 4:00 p.m., it was a foregone conclusion that this year would be the biggest 11.11 ever – something Alibaba Group executives had promised heading into the shopping festival.
But as they took the stage to speak to media, while satisfied with the record GMV, abundantly clear was how proud they were that the digital ecosystem they’d crafted over the past several years performed as robustly as anyone could have hoped."
Source:  Alizila, 11th November 2018
Also - Apple was the best selling mobile phone brand

China has more 'Unicorns' than all the other non-US countries put together

"More companies outside of the U.S. are reaching unicorn status at a quicker pace than ever before.
Membership in the Unicorn Club is exploding. These unicorns, or startup companies valued at more than a billion dollars, are increasingly based outside of the U.S.
In fact, nearly half of the 193 current members of the unicorn club (with a total cumulative valuation of $665 billion) are based outside of the U.S., according to data from CB Insights, a venture capital and angel investment database.
“Thirty-seven percent of all companies (current and past unicorns) that achieved a $1B+ valuation in 2014 were based outside the U.S.,” according to CB Insights. “The following year, 53 percent of all the companies that reached unicorn status that year were based outside of the U.S. In 2016, that number increased again to 58 percent. So far in 2018, there have been 11 companies added to the global unicorn club; 8 are based outside of the U.S.
China, with 46, has the most unicorn startups. In fact, China has more unicorns than all the other countries combined. China is also home to the five most valuable startups (Xiaomi, Didi Chuxing, China Internet Plus, Lu.com, and Toutiao), according to CB Insights.
India is the closest rival to China, with 9 unicorns, followed by the UK with 8; Germany with 4; and South Korea with 3."
Source:  Data from CB Insights, reported by Larry Kim on Medium, 13th February 2018

Dockless bike sharing schemes in Shenzhen have led to a 13% fall in petrol consumption

"Before the advent of dockless bike-sharing in Chinese cities cycling accounted for 5.5 percent of transport miles. It has now more than doubled to 11.6 percent. This is according to White Book of Shared Bike and City Development 2017, a Chinese-language report from the Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Innovation Institute, an urban planning consultancy.
According to the Chinese State Information Center's Sharing Economy Research Center there are now 16 million dockless bicycles in the country, and each was used an average of three times a day.
The release-by-app GPS-trackable modem-equipped bikes are cheap and simple to use, attracting newbies to cycling. A report from Shenzhen's Transport Commission said that the city's 500,000 bike-share bikes had replaced nearly 10 percent of travel by private car, and 13 percent of petrol consumption."

Source:  Bike Biz, 26th January 2018

Chinese consumers account for 1/3 of global luxury spending

"Sales of luxury goods in China are skyrocketing — up around 20 percent from 2016 — in its sharpest growth since 2011, as Chinese millennials seek products like handbags and cosmetics, Reuters reported.
Within China, sales of brands from Gucci to Chanel, which have been sluggish for years, rose at the fastest pace in five years in 2016 and are positioned to consolidate those gains in 2018. Sales of luxury goods in China reached 142 billion yuan ($22.07 billion) in 2016 in a 20 percent increase from the prior year, Bain & Co said in a report on Wednesday.
As the biggest spenders of luxury products in the world, Chinese consumers made up 32 percent of the €262 billion spent in the global market last year, fueling sales at France’s LVMH, Burberry and Gucci owner Kering. 2017 saw a global recovery of the luxury retail market due to their affinity for high-end brands.
Capitalizing on the trend, French fashion retailer Louis Vuitton, part of LVMH, launched an eCommerce website in China in 2017. Louis Vuitton, which opened its first store in Beijing in 1992, offers items from leather goods to shoes on its website."

Source:  PYMNTS, 18th January 2018

WeChat users send 38bn messages per day

"The chatty users of WeChat have just set a new record, sending 38 billion messages per day. That’s 25 percent more than last year.
[WhatsApp has 55bn per day]
Tencent, maker of WeChat, also revealed a few more stats today in its 2017 WeChat Data Report:
6.1 billion voice messages sent each day
205 million video and voice calls daily
50 million “seniors” – age 55-70 – are active users
3.5 million active “official accounts,” used by brands, media outlets, bloggers, and celebrities
797 million users actively browse through content from official accounts"

Source:  Tech in Asia, 9th November 2017

More in WeChat's 2017 Data Report

Start-ups have placed more than 16m shared bicycles in China

"There are now more than 16 million shared bicycles on the road in China’s traffic-clogged cities, thanks to a fierce battle for market share among 70-plus companies backed by a total of more than $1 billion in financing. These start-ups have reshaped the urban landscape, putting bikes equipped with GPS and digital locks on almost every street corner in a way that Silicon Valley can only dream of."
Source:  NYT, 2nd September 2017

Alfa Romeo sold 350 cars in 33 seconds on Alibaba's Tmall

"Luxury auto brand Alfa Romeo on Tuesday forged an exclusive strategic partnership with Alibaba’s Tmall to market and sell its cars online in China.
The two sides said at a press conference in Hangzhou that Tmall will serve as the sole authorized Internet channel for the Italian car brand owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) inside China. Tmall is China’s largest B2C online commerce platform. They spoke just before Alfa Romeo debuted on Tmall, selling out all of the 350 Giulia Milano car models it offered in 33 seconds during the “Tmall Super Brand Day,” an online marketing promotion held by the Alibaba unit.
Alfa Romeo isn’t new to China. It tested the waters here years ago and announced its return to the country last year.
The new partnership follows the success last year of Alfa Romeo’s sister brand, Maserati, on Tmall, which is also owned by FCA. Maserati opened its flagship store on Tmall on the same day last year and sold out its allotment of 100 Levante SUVs in a mere 18 seconds."
Source:  AliZila, 21st March 2017

WeChat users sent 46 billion 'Red Envelopes' over Lunar New Year 2017

"Users of WeChat sent around 46 billion electronic red packets - digital versions of traditional envelopes stuffed with cash - via the Chinese mobile social platform over the Lunar New Year period, the official Xinhua new agency reported on Saturday.
China has a long tradition of giving red packets during the Lunar New Year, which fell on Jan. 28 this year.
Internet giants such as Alibaba Group Holding have promoted the use of virtual red packets, also known as "hongbaos", to grow business in the country's booming mobile payment market.
The number of digital red packets sent via WeChat, owned by Alibaba rival Tencent Holdings Ltd, rose 43 percent in the Jan. 27 and Feb. 1 period compared with a year earlier, according to Xinhua.
People in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hebei led the red packets mania, Xinhua said. South Korea saw the most spending using WeChat Pay by Chinese travelers outside of mainland China, a Tencent spokesman told Reuters by email."

Source:  Reuters, 6th February 2017

Alibaba sites now have nearly 500m monthly active users

"Jack Ma’s online shopping empire now has 493 million users who access its China marketplaces every month on mobile devices, up from 393 million at the end of 2015, said Alibaba today in its latest earnings report.
The Taobao and Tmall marketplaces now have 443 million annual active buyers, rising strongly from 407 million 12 months ago. Alibaba makes the equivalent of US$35 in revenue from each shopper.
The new figures come amidst a strong performance for Alibaba in the quarter from October to December 2016 in which it pulled in US$2.5 billion net income from total revenue – up 54 percent in the past year – of US$7.7 billion. The ecommerce behemoth beat analyst expectations with plenty of legroom."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 24th January 2017

Over half of smartphone owners in the US, UK and China pay no money for apps

"Over half of smartphone users spend no money on smartphone apps (paid-for downloads and in-app transactions), according to a new survey by Gartner, Inc. (see Figure 1)*. However, end-user spending on in-app transactions continues to rise.
"Where users are prepared to pay for apps, spending on in-app transactions is on the rise — up 26 percent from 2015 — while spending on paid-for downloads only increased 4 percent in 2016," said Stéphanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. In this year's survey, mean spending on in-app transactions was $11.59, while mean spending on paid-for downloads reached $7.67.
Paid-for downloads are more likely to be associated with smaller amounts of spending. Respondents who spent $15 or more over a three-month period were more likely to have done so through in-app transactions. "This is largely because the vast majority of paid-for mobile apps have a price tag of $1.99 or less, while the activation of in-app transactions usually means that the user has found value in an app and will be happy to spend more on it," Ms, Baghdassarian added."

Source:  Press release from Gartner, 26th January 2017

Note - Research only covers US, UK and China

WeChat has 768m daily users; 50% use if for more than 90 minutes a day

Source:  Blog post from WeChat, 29th December 2016

Chinese brands account for more than half of smartphone sales in India

"Chinese mobile phone brands are booming in India, for the first time ever making up more than half – 51 percent – of new devices in the world’s second largest smartphone market.
Meanwhile, Indian brands dropped below 20 percent market share of shipments in November, according to Counterpoint Research, plummeting from 40 percent in early 2016.
Local brands have been facing increasingly stiff competition from Chinese brands that are affordable.
Counterpoint research analyst Karn Chauhan says most Chinese brands are in the US$75-200 price segment. As per market share data for the September quarter, Xiaomi has pushed out local players and now dominates this segment, along with Samsung. Those budget phones have seen a growth of over 45 percent in the past year.
The biggest gainers were China’s Vivo and Gionee, making mid-range – US$250-450 – phones, a segment that soared by over 150 percent."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 4th January 2017

14,500 Western brands have stores on Alibaba's Tmall

"The demand for overseas goods continues to drive cross-border e-commerce in China and, as a result, further growth for Tmall Global.
The B2C shopping site, which provides Chinese consumers with a direct sales channel to overseas retailers, saw the total number of international brands on the platform skyrocket 169 percent to 14,500 in 2016 from 5,400 last year. The number of product categories soared 85 percent to 3,700 from 2,000 over the same period."

Source:  Alizila, 13th January 2017