Chinese apps gain traction in Belt and Road region

BEIJING - Chinese apps have gained traction in the Belt and Road region as more app developers ventured into the growing mobile app market, a report showed Thursday.

About 55 percent of the downloads of Chinese apps last year were in the Belt and Road region, compared with 47 percent in 2015, according to the latest report from global leading app market analyzer App Annie.

Web browser app UC Browser stood out as the most downloaded Chinese app on iOS and Google Play in the Belt and Road region, followed by cross-platform file transfer tool SHAREit and smart phone speed optimizer Clean Master.

E-commerce mogul Alibaba and mobile internet giant Cheetah Mobile held the biggest market shares in the top 30 most downloaded Chinese apps in the region.

The Belt and Road region is a vibrant market with remarkable potential for apps as it has seen its app download volume rise about 70 percent in the past two years, outpacing the global growth rate, according to Dai Bin, head of the Greater China region at App Annie.

Globally, Chinese gaming giant Tencent and NetEase outperformed peers last year in revenue generated by downloading and using their apps.

China remained the world's largest app market in 2017, accounting for about one quarter of the world's total app-related consumption, App Annie pointed out in an earlier report.

China has the world's largest mobile internet community with about 753 million mobile internet users at the end of 2017, official data showed.