Online celebrity boom to sustain China’s mobile internet sector as smartphone sales falter
Users’ engagement time with their handsets is increasing as the era of the social media star takes off
Sales of smartphones in China may peak in 2016, but the amount of time users spend glued to their handset screens is getting longer.
It’s that trend that will help sustain the mobile online sector, whose offerings range from shopping platforms to lifestyle and entertainment services, analysts and industry insiders say.
Yang Weiqing, president of Chinese consulting firm IResearch, said mobile phones now account for 65 per cent of the time Chinese people spend looking at screens, and the proportion is rising despite sales growth of smartphones apparently beginning to falter this year.
Although shipments of smartphones in China recovered in the third quarter on the back of strong sales by domestic handset makers Huawei and Oppo, after sluggish growth in the first half, many analysts believe the upward momentum is faltering.
“A lot of people are pessimistic about the macro economy outlook of China nowadays, and some worry that online business has reached a bottle neck after the fast growth of the past five years, but I would say some basic trends have not changed,” said Yang on Thursday during an investment forum held by Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.
