China now has 386 million active Android users

China now has 386 million daily active Android users, according to data from Baidu, China’s top search engine.

This is the first time we’ve had an update on this figure since Q3 2013, when the search giant said the country had 270 million active Android users each day.

A Baidu representative issued the figure to Tech in Asia, explaining that the new 386 million number was compiled for the company’s Q2 Mobile Distribution Report but was not actually included in the document. Instead the report just showed a graph of the growth in Android usage without displaying any absolute numbers.

For a sense of scale, Google said in July that it sees one billion monthly active Android users.

Below is a chart of the rapid growth in Android usage in China, using the three daily active user (DAU) data points available from Baidu. Thanks to cheaper smartphones from brands such as Xiaomi and Coolpad, Android has exploded in China in the past few years. The number of daily users in the country seems to have doubled from Q1 2013 to Q2 2014.

See: Smartphones in India and China: a tale of growth versus stagnation in 2014

Counting the Droids

In many ways, Baidu is in a better position to talk about this topic than Google. That’s because Google counts Android activation by counting only devices where the user visits the Google Play store. However, Google Play has been blocked in China since June of this year; and even before then it was used by few Chinese Android users, which helped spur a billion-dollar industry in third-party Android app stores.

Baidu, on the other hand, counts based on discrete visits to its numerous sites. So it’s the best figure we can get on Android in this scenario.

The number of active Android users in China may be about to slow as China’s mature smartphone market gets close to saturation point. That means most smartphone sales are replacements, rather than newcomers switching over from basic phones.

This post China now has 386 million active Android users appeared first on Tech in Asia.

China now has 386 million active Android users