If Xiaomi users are from Mars, Huawei users are from… also Mars? Jiguang Data has published two research papers on the two biggest Chinese smartphone makers analyzing the brands’ users and showing what connects them and what separates them.
Among the more interesting numbers of the report was the proportion of male users of Xiaomi. Xiaomi’s fan club seems overwhelmingly male: 69.1% of users are men. In Huawei’s case that number is a little lower but the testosterone levels are still relatively high: 66% of Huawei’s mobile phone users are male. No statistics were given for non-binary gender.
The numbers show that both brands still have room to grow in the female demographic. This little illustration shows one reason why the Chinese female users flock to other phones (from the report, no kidding):
The highest concentration of Xiaomi users was in the 30-34 age bracket (31.7%), followed by 25-29 years (25.4%). The above 30 population accounted for 50% of Xiaomi’s user base. At the same time, age distribution results showed that 44% of Huawei users were older than 30 years, while Huawei users under 25 accounted for only 26.1%.
Xiaomi made its success by offering low-cost, high-quality smartphones in smaller cities and despite the company’s growth, statistics still reflect this. Only 12.47% of Xiaomi users live in 1st-tier cities, while the majority—50.97%—resides in 2nd and 3rd-tier towns. Chengdu, Chongqing, and Zhengzhou seem to be hot spots for Xiaomi fans.
Surprisingly, Huawei has the same results despite being marketed as a high-end phone. Among Huawei users, 56.9% are located in 3rd-tier cities or lower while only 12% are in 1st-tier cities. This can be explained by the fact that Huawei also started as a low-cost phone maker and still has a line of cheaper phones.
The app distribution is where things get interesting. According to Jiguang, Xiaomi’s male users preferred apps in the online reading, office, and business, and news categories. This includes apps like Duokan Yuedu, Microsoft’s office package and news apps like Jinri Toutiao and Yidian Zixun. Female Xiaomi users preferred three types of apps: online reading, education and learning, and social. The education category shows that there are a lot of mothers helping their kids with homework with apps like Zuoyebang, while women’s favorite social apps are QQ and Douban.
Online reading is the biggest surprise here: the penetration rate 70.5% among Xiaomi’s male users, almost a third than the national average. The rate is 60% among female users.
Huawei users seem to have the wanderlust fever: the most popular category was mobility and travel, followed by financial management, and life and leisure. These include popular ride-hailing and bike renting apps, banking apps, and O2O app Meituan Dianping, The penetration rate of travel apps is slightly higher than the national average, standing at 76.6%. Clearly, good food and relaxation are one of Huawei users’ life goals.
Interestingly, categories like selfie and beautification apps as well as online video were significantly less popular than the national average which doesn’t mean that Huawei’s users are less narcissistic, it means that they still have room for growth among the younger population.