China’s Smartphone Market
Market research organization IDC reported that in Q4 2015 Chinese market smartphone shipments reached 117.3 million units, up 8% YoY. The November 11 (Double Eleven) Internet shopping festival and Huawei’s great performance in Q4 were the main drivers for this growth. The top 5 smartphone vendors by overall market share in 2015 were Xiaomi (15%), Huawei (14.5%), Apple (13.4%), OPPO (8.1%) and vivo (8.1%). Huawei was the #1 vendor in Q4, which accounted for 15.2% of total market shipments with a 50.8% YoY growth.
Apple Pay
Apple Pay will launch in China February 18th. There are currently 19 banks that support Apple Pay in China. China is the 5th country to support Apple Pay. Apple said that Apple Pay will be launched in Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain later.
New Regulations in China
In a new move to further limit foreign companies’ presence in China (and their joint ventures), a new regulation will take place next month called the “Regulation for the Management of Online Publishing Services.” It will affect the publication of creative works including video games, animation, comics, audio recordings and video recordings. With this new regulation, foreign companies and their joint ventures will not be allowed to directly publish any creative works on the mainland and must seek approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television for any published work. Local governments will also be enabled to more tightly monitor and restrict domestic online publishers.
More Chinese Gamers Using Steam Platform
According to data from Steam Spy, since Steam launched support for the RMB, the number of Chinese users on Steam reached to 4% of total number of Steam users. Now China has 6 million activated accounts on Steam.
Steam is one method of distributing games digitally with digital rights management (DRM) as a way to combat piracy, a critical issue in emerging markets including China.
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