In the Android mobile reading market, iReader still ranked the first in the Android platform market while strengthening the effort to attack the iOS segment; in Q3, QQReaad outgrew the overall market, and ranked the second with a market share rise of 0.3 percentage point to 16.3%; and Tadu still ranked the third with a market share of 11.1%. Besides, XM91, HeRead and Tyread performed not very well in the Android platform segment and suffered sluggish user growth. However, ReadingJoy, Qidian and 163Read performed well in user growth, and their market shares all edged up.
According to Analysis’ statistical data, by 2015 Q3, the quantities of genuine books owned by China’s mainstream reading platforms gradually rose. Qidian had a content library of up to 1.49 million books, ranking the first; QQRead continued integrating the original novel resources of China Reading Limited, and its content library grew to 800,000 books, ranking the second; and the content library of 163Read grew to 600,000 books, staying at the third place. Relying on online book sales, Dangdang.com has navigated many users to go online from offline and become the largest e-commerce platform in China’s book market. As the electronic book market is getting increasingly hot, the sales volume of paper books has borne a full brunt. This year, Dangdang.com has identified the digital business as a pillar business of the company, mainly incubated and funded 100 digital content studios, and supplied original contents to its digital reading product. At present, the Dangdang.com reading platform has 453,000 books, of which electronic editions of traditional books account for 90%, and original novels take a share of less than 10%. In the quarter, the book resources of HeRead and iReader grew slowly, while ReadingJoy, Tadu and XM91 bolstered their content platforms by adding tens of thousands of books every quarter.
At the beginning of this year, Zhangyue declared to establish Zhangyue Literature in a move to enter the online original literature area. At the same time, Quewang.com, Zhangyue Culture and Hongshu.com under its flag have signed agreements with excellent original works to deliver high-quality contents to the Zhangyue platform. With these moves, Zhangyue now is active in the excessive entertainment area covering publishing, film & TV, gaming, animation and voice entertainment, and excellent works IP will embrace a broader prospect and vast growth opportunity. In Q3, Zhangyue iReader had 420,00 books, and was favored by many users after the launch of several original novels and palm games based on these novels, despite slow growth rate of the content size. Nitian Xianzu, first published at Hongshu.com in 2012, has long taken the lead among popular works, and another original novel Wuqi Dashi, first published at Zhangyue’s novel website, and now has 750,000 characters. It gained more than 18,000 paying users seven hours after launch, more than 13,000 high-end paying users and an average user base of 8,600 for every VIP chapter. Now, the novel is very popular. Zhangyue and Ewan have jointly developed the mobile phone games Nitian Xianzue and Wuqi Dashi, in an attempt to enter crossover cooperation with more IPs, and Zhangyue iReader has also kept very popular with more excellent original novels.
This year, the teleplays based on several online novels such as Hua Qiangu and Nirvana in Fire have attracted great attention from the audience and highlighted the importance of high-quality IPs. Now, the teleplay, film and game circles are violently struggling for IPs. China Reading Limited, as the platform that has supplied the largest number of IPs, obviously has the largest quantity of famous authors and high-quality works. It attracts users with high viscosity, depending on the vast original contents it has long accumulated. Therefore, China Reading Limited is now accelerating the pace to build an entire IP industrial chain and growing stronger and stronger while establishing the copyright norm. In Q3, QQRead, an important mobile application platform of China Reading Limited, continued integrating vast original contents of China Reading Limited, and also strengthened cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers. At the same time, QQRead strengthened brand promotion through market campaigns, and expanded its user base to a large extent. Besides, Qidian increased its market share to some extent compared to the previous quarter, which was also attributable to the great resource support from China Reading Limited to some extent.
Adhering to the premium works strategy, Tadu has cultivated a crowd of popular authors and gained many fans with the Legend of Queen Xi. At the same time, the IP licensing of the Legend of Queen Xi has also become a typical case. In Q3, Tadu released New Bride, the new works of the famous female author Mo Zigui. The works is highly popular and has gained many fans.
While still delivering a good reading experience to users, ReadingJoy strengthened profound strategic partnership with publishing houses. Now, it owns 210,000 books, and will soon launch a new platform with enhanced stability to realize smoother start and download.
China Mobile Reading Base, the predecessor of HeRead, was born five years ago and the brand was announced in January 2014. Now, China Mobile has Migu Digital Media according to its overall development strategy. HeRead is a content convergence platform with 450,000 genuine books and has accumulated a batch of stable users. In October 2015, it formally launched the client V5.50 and also changed its name to “Migu Read”.
In the opinion of Analysys, since 2014, “reading by all” has been written into the government’s working report twice. During the Two Conferences this year, Premier Li Keqiang expressed his new expectation of the sector. He advocated reading by all people to build a learning society and hoped learning by all would become an atmosphere. Judging from the curent status of China’s mobile reading market, reading vendors are now actively advocating “reading by all”. They have spent several years on the way to seek differential competition and gained some brand images. Over the past two years, relevant government authorities have strengthened the treatment of the market, and the operation of reading platforms has become more compliant. Now, the competition in user, content and product experience is a key performance indicator for mobile reading applications.
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