Mobile apps soar in China as games and messages excite investors

In 2014, there were 649 million internet users on mainland China, and 557 million of those were mobile users. Mobile app use is also growing extremely quickly across the border. Mobile games and messaging apps are making the biggest noise, with WeChat one of the most popular. Almost all mainland mobile users are using a messaging app. Mobile travel booking apps are the fastest-growing category, with their usage increasing 194.6 per cent.

Due to the strong interest in the start-up and app market on the mainland, increasing numbers of investors are flocking to grab a piece of the market. So, what makes the mainland mobile market so enticing?

Andy Tian is co-founder and CEO of Asia Innovations, maker of PengPeng, one of the fastest-growing mobile social apps in the country. He believes venture capitalists play a big role in the success of the market. 

“The foundation of venture capital is growth, that is, [when] venture capitalists invest in small businesses in the hope of them growing a hundred- or a thousand-fold. Therefore, China’s rapid growth in the past 20 years, on top of a huge economy base, is extremely attractive to venture capital,” Tian says.

“In addition, venture capital needs to return profit to its limited partners, and as the number of initial public offerings from Chinese internet companies increased in the last few years, many funds made a lot of money, especially since some of the world’s largest public valuations are from China. Finally, China has a large base of technical talent, which provides the necessary resources to create massive companies. As the entire venture capital market started to grow only in the past 10 years, we can anticipate even more growth in future.”