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Chinese App Store Growing Amid Challenges

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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30,864


The Wall Street Journal reports on progress for Apple's App Store in China, noting the challenges faced by the company due to a lack of Wi-Fi on official iPhones, a large installed base of unlocked and jailbroken iPhones, and high levels of piracy. But despite reportedly slow launch sales of the officially-sanctioned iPhone, the Chinese App Store is still managing to quickly expand its small market.
The market for legitimate Chinese iPhone apps is small but surging. Mr. Shi's company estimates about $1 million worth of legitimate iPhone apps have been sold so far this year, though the market could reach $6 million by next year. By comparison, mobile advertising firm AdMob says about $200 million in apps are sold overall through Apple's store each month.
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Apple also faces challenges in its payments systems, with consumers required to hold a credit card issued by a Chinese bank, a relatively uncommon notion there, in order to purchase App Store content.

The report focuses on a number of applications that have become successful in China, from locally-produced content such as news and blogging applications from news portal Sina.com to versions of common Western applications such as Quickoffice and EA's Command & Conquer.
"Localization is most important. Products should be as much in line with Chinese lifestyles as possible," says Mr. Shi, who noted Texas Hold 'Em games likely wouldn't go over well.
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A slideshow of ten popular apps is also presented, ranging from games such as Need for Speed Undercover and Gold Miner 2 to more Chinese-specific applications like Autonavi (the only Chinese navigation application, and the store's top revenue producer) and Powerword 2.0 (a Chinese-English translation app).

Article Link: Chinese App Store Growing Amid Challenges
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/11/17/chinese-app-store-growing-amid-challenges/
S

sjo

macrumors 6502a
Aug 30, 2005
510
0
AdMob said:
By comparison, mobile advertising firm AdMob says about $200 million in apps are sold overall through Apple's store each month.
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that would make $2.4B revenue annually, or 600m quarterly. if that was true, it should be visible apples' quarterly income statements. i fail to see under which revenue stream that kind of number is included, so the number is highly speculative.
 
N

nkawtg72

macrumors 6502
Aug 16, 2007
308
0
sjo said:
that would make $2.4B revenue annually, or 600m quarterly. if that was true, it should be visible apples' quarterly income statements. i fail to see under which revenue stream that kind of number is included, so the number is highly speculative.
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the $200 million doesn't represent Apple's take. your math is wrong.
 
V

vista.john

macrumors regular
Oct 24, 2008
189
18
TB Apple said:
Anyone know the reason China doesn't allow WiFi? :confused:
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1. as above mentioned. tight control of media content. but not solely.
2. they have recently come up with a "new" technology/standard, WAPI.They are trying to force the WAPI standard to all coming phones...

Apparently, Chinese iphone is going to get wi-fi next year.
 
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..........?

macrumors member
Jan 11, 2005
52
0
Don't under estimate people in China. I don't think app store will lower since if you jailbreak and phone and pirate apps. They would have done it already.

There are many people in china that have loads of money and no where to spend it. So being able to spend it on apps is something they would happily do.
 
S

soft

macrumors newbie
Jan 8, 2009
23
0
When visiting Apple Store in Beijing half year ago i was playing with an iPod Touch.
It seemed to be alot of Apps. Several "find taxi, hotel, resturant" and stuff like that.
 
D

dmjossel

macrumors newbie
Apr 14, 2008
28
0
MacRumors said:


The Wall Street Journal reports on progress for Apple's App Store in China, noting the challenges faced by the company due to a lack of Wi-Fi on official iPhones, a large installed base of unlocked and jailbroken iPhones, and high levels of piracy.
Click to expand...

The large installed base of unlocked and jailbroken iPhones shouldn't be that much of an obstacle-- unless they have decided to attempt to block them from the store, which I think is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Not all apps available through other channels are free, and not all of them are better than those in the app store. Not everyone who has a jailbroken phone uses it for piracy-- I own three and I have never pirated a single app. Even if I'm in the minority, the pool of jailbroken phones is still a potential audience for the Chinese app store, not an obstacle to be overcome.
 
samh004

samh004

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2004
2,222
141
Australia
I fail to see why Texas Hold ‘Em games wouldn’t be well received. There is a large percentage of mainland Chinese that like to go to Macau and spend their money, although lately China has been stopping them from going… so I’d think such games would sell well.

China’s not that different to the rest of the world. :rolleyes:
 
L

leonstafford

macrumors regular
Nov 8, 2007
101
0
Kyoto, Japan
MacRumors said:
"Localization is most important. Products should be as much in line with Chinese lifestyles as possible," says Mr. Shi, who noted Texas Hold 'Em games likely wouldn't go over well.
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umm, wtf? 95% of customers in Australian casinos are Chinese. Just because their totalitarian government may not condone it, doesn't mean it's no part of their lifestyles...
 
I

iVoid

macrumors 65816
Jan 9, 2007
1,145
190
leonstafford said:
umm, wtf? 95% of customers in Australian casinos are Chinese. Just because their totalitarian government may not condone it, doesn't mean it's no part of their lifestyles...
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I imagine that the App approval process is even harder in China. I'm sure a grunt from the Communist government has to sign off on all Apps for the Chinese app store. Ironically, a function done by Apple itself in the 'free' world.
 
L

leonstafford

macrumors regular
Nov 8, 2007
101
0
Kyoto, Japan
iVoid said:
I imagine that the App approval process is even harder in China. I'm sure a grunt from the Communist government has to sign off on all Apps for the Chinese app store. Ironically, a function done by Apple itself in the 'free' world.
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haha, so true!

Subtract the packets required for filtering and their transfer speeds undoubtedly suck ass, too. It's impossible to Skype or QQ with people from China... But if you can, mention "powder milk" whenever possible as it's one of their flagged words after their biggest baby's powdered milk companies was caught killing babies by putting nasty chemicals in their powdered milk...
 
C

cypherpunk

macrumors newbie
Nov 17, 2009
2
0
> Apple also faces challenges in its payments systems, with consumers required to hold a credit card issued by a Chinese bank, a relatively uncommon notion there, in order to purchase App Store content.

Funny, because China is way ahead of the western world in making small payments easily. Most people pay using their cell phone accounts–*I wonder why Apple wouldn't take advantage of this?
 
kdarling

kdarling

macrumors P6
Jun 9, 2007
17,373
5,924
First university coding class = 47 years ago
TB Apple said:
Anyone know the reason China doesn't allow WiFi? :confused:
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With a LAN (fixed connection) they can figure out whose computer is accessing forbidden sites and/or prevent it.

The same goes for a cell phone data connection, since it belongs to only one person and has to go through a known, controlled carrier.

With WiFi, a user can anonymously connect on the fly to a hotspot, so it's harder to track down the actual rule violator.

Does anyone know if their new WiFi standard requires a user id?
 
B

bellmanEquation

macrumors newbie
Nov 18, 2009
1
0
kdarling said:
With a LAN (fixed connection) they can figure out whose computer is accessing forbidden sites and/or prevent it.

The same goes for a cell phone data connection, since it belongs to only one person and has to go through a known, controlled carrier.

With WiFi, a user can anonymously connect on the fly to a hotspot, so it's harder to track down the actual rule violator.

Does anyone know if their new WiFi standard requires a user id?
Click to expand...

When you answer someone's question, and you don't know the answer, maybe you should spend at least 5 minutes Google it before you say anything. This way at least you won't provide misleading answers.

China is trying to push their own standard called WAPI mainly for trade protection. However wifi is not completely banned because it has been widely used for laptop and other devices for years. You can find wifi hotspots in most hotels. There is no wifi in iPhone because when the chinese carrier got their licence, the stripped down version of iPhone is already in production (I guess they should have waited a bit longer). That is why the next round of iPhone coming off the assembly line will have wifi.
 
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