China is a huge growth driver of mobile app and game downloads, with over half of the country’s mobile user base engaged in such activity, according to new research from Canalys. The analyst firm claims that 51 percent of Chinese end users download apps or games on their mobile phones – 29 percent more than their Western European counterparts.

“The high frequency and popularity of application downloading in China stems from wide availability,” commented Canalys’ senior analyst T Y Lau. “There is a broad selection of Java content on portals, such as Sina, Sohu and QQ (Tencent), as well as a good range of dedicated phone apps available from mobile operators and phone vendors, such as Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Yulong, which already operate their own application stores in China.”

Books ranked as the top application category in China to download to mobile phones, with 68 percent of respondents who downloaded apps stating that they read books on their phones. There were distinct differences in behaviour depending on the age of respondents, with 76 percent of younger respondents (aged 16 to 25) downloading books to their phones, compared with 55 percent of older respondents (aged 36 to 55).

The research noted that a wide variety of free and paid-for e-book content, including Chinese classics, novels and popular comics, is available via China Mobile’s Mobile Market Store, and publishers and vendors such as ChineseAll, Hanwang/Hanvon and Shanda. Productivity-boosting reference apps, such as translation apps and dictionaries, also ranked highly among Chinese respondents.

Weather, news, navigation and mapping apps also featured highly. Although the huge takeup of social networking apps in Europe did not feature as prominently in China, the survey found that two-thirds of social networking users in China were willing to pay for access to their favourite social networking sites. More than half of these respondents were open to paying at least CNY10 (US$1.47) each month for the privilege. Local social networking site Qzone led the Chinese market (with over 80 percent of respondents registered for the services), followed by Kaixin001 and Renren. Of the worldwide social networking brands, MySpace held the top spot in China (ahead of Facebook), with 23 percent of respondents signed up to the service.

“International vendors with ambitions in China must keep abreast of these cultural preferences and work with local publishers to expand and localise their content offerings,” added Lau. “Consumers in China already show an increasing affinity for application downloads that go beyond smartphones. As new devices are brought to market, such as e-book readers and pads, vendors must be ready to rejuvenate existing content and engage their developer communities to support the leap to larger screen sizes.”

The survey also found that in China, mobile downloads extend well beyond smartphone-only users. Almost half of Nokia’s non-smartphone customers surveyed use their phones to download applications and games. 

Canalys’ upbeat statements conflict with a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that noted that while the Chinese market is not short of developers, in terms of app stores it is hugely fragmented, with many customers using smaller, independent stores and electronics retailers to get mobile apps. The WSJ report also highlighted the prevalence of piracy in the country and its impact on sales. In addition it said that revenue share-terms in China are often less generous than for international markets – although in some cases this is offset by the size of the customer base.

Indeed, while China Mobile’s app store is widely seen as being among the most successful service in the country, many developers have still not embraced it fully. Last month the world’s largest operator said its Mobile Market store had attracted 50,000 registered developers, with 20,000 applications available and over 25 million downloads, by the end of June 2010. However, it did not reveal how many of its 550 million customers were using the store.