智能手机：中国下一个重要的经济指标

    中国的智能手机用户数已经创造了一项新的世界纪录，在中国这个全球人口最多的互联网市场，这一事实将在2013年对互联网内容和商业产生重大影响。今天，中国的手机用户已经拥有多达3.3亿部智能手机，比2011年增长了150%。中国的一家本土研究机构艾媒市场咨询公司（iiMedia）近日发布了这一数据，目前尚未被英文媒体广泛传播。

    中国激活的智能手机总数已超过美国的3.21亿部。曾先后担任微软（Microsoft）和谷歌（Google）中国研究院院长的李开复预测，到2013年末，中国的智能手机总量将达到5亿部。这场从传统手机向智能手机的跨越过程，其意义十分深远，而且最终将影响到人们密切关注的中国GDP增长率。5亿智能手机用户将使中国的电子和实体商务孕育出新的业务模式，由此带来的影响将是全球性的。特别是，联系到中国当前正在努力提升国内消费对GDP的拉动作用，因此智能手机的普及尤其重要。

    智能手机对于未来互联网的使用、电子支付以及产品品牌推广等非常重要。因为今天在中国，使用智能手机上网的人数已经超过了用电脑上网的人数。随着移动互联网用户数进一步增长，许多网络服务可能将被设计成只适用于移动设备，届时网络服务也将经历一次重大转型。这种情况在中国发生的可能性要比在其他国家更大。因为在中国，笔记本电脑和台式电脑的普及率要远远低于美国。智能手机将有助于提高老百姓对品牌的认知度，使人们养成在购买前进行调查、比价的习惯，同时将促进线上线下支付的增长，以及热门网络内容的社交媒体传播等。

    以中国的汽车市场为例。中国现在已经是世界第一大汽车消费国。如果汽车厂商瞄准了这些移动电话消费者，那么新车型可能会很快热卖。购买前调查是人们购车前的一个重要环节，有了智能手机后，人们在智能手机上调查车型的次数将越来越多。如果社交媒体内容设计得当，再加上转载率很高的视频广告和促销活动，很容易吸引顾客来到经销商门店里，给厂商带来几十万台汽车的销量。

    智能手机已经在一些较大的互联网市场中对实体商店产生了促进作用。美国实体商店销售出的商品中，有价值1,590亿美元的商品是顾客在使用智能手机进行调查，受其影响后购买的。有些聪明的零售商已经开始利用这种现象了。比如，如果消费者在店内用智能手机扫描条形码的话，店方就会一次性向该顾客额外赠送优惠券。目前大型连锁超市在中国各地的增长势头仍然十分迅速，如果哪些超市能把眼光瞄准那些移动互联网用户，并推出类似服务，那么他们与依赖传通营销方式的超市相比，将拥有重大的竞争优势。

    随着智能手机用户群不断增长，中国的应用程序市场也正在快速增长。腾讯（Tencent）的微信已经拥有了近3亿用户，其中绝大多数都在中国。中国领先的搜索引擎百度（Baidu）最近也发布了一款类似苹果Siri的语音软件，用户可以在外出时方便地搜索信息和地理位置。作为中国最知名的电子商务网站之一的淘宝网（Taobao），拥有一款iOS版和安卓（Android）版的应用程序，用户可以在移动设备上预览和购物。淘宝是阿里巴巴（Alibaba）的一个子公司，阿里巴巴推出的支付宝功能有些像eBay的Paypal。随着智能手机的激增，支付宝也必将获得巨大增长。

    China has broken a new global record in smartphone penetration and this will have dramatic effects on content and commerce in 2013 in the world's most populous internet market. Mobile subscribers in China are now using 330 million smartphones—which is a 150% increase over last year. iiMedia, a Chinese research firm, recently released this smartphone data, which has not been widely distributed in English.

    China's active smartphone now exceeds the total number of all 321 million mobile phones active in the US. Kai-fu Lee, the former lead China researcher at Microsoft (MSFT) and then Google (GOOG), predicts that China will have500 million smartphones in use by the end of 2013. The implications of such a dramatic flip from dumb-to-smart phones are far-reaching and will ultimately affect the closely watched GDP growth rate in China. Those 500 million smartphone users are going to drive new patterns of online and offline commerce that will have global consequences. This is particularly relevant as China attempts to increase the role of domestic consumption as a driver of its GDP.

    Smartphones are key to the future of internet usage, electronic payments and product branding since relatively few people in China access the web via traditional PCs. As the number of mobile internet users grows, online services will undergo a significant transformation with many new online services to be conceived of as mobile only. (See, for instance, Fortune's Facebook's China problem.) This will be more pronounced in China where the penetration rate of laptops and desktops per capita is far lower than the US. Smartphones will drive brand awareness, pre-purchase research, price comparison, payments for both online and in-person transactions, and social media distribution of popular content.

    Take China's auto market, which sells more cars than any other country. New models can quickly take off in sales if their manufacturers target such mobile consumers. Pre-purchase research is critical in car-buying and more of it will increasingly occur on smartphones. Well-orchestrated social media, viral video and incentive campaigns can bring customers into dealerships and translate into hundreds of thousands of units in sales.

    Smartphones are already helping brick-and-mortar stores in large internet markets. In the US,$159 billion worth of goods bought in-store were influenced by use of a smartphone during the purchase. By 2016, consultancy Deloitte estimates that number will reach an eye-popping $689 billion. Smart retailers are taking advantage of this phenomenon by giving consumers additional coupons for scanning a bar code in-store for one-time incentives. Big-box chains are still growing aggressively across the China and those who targeting this growing mass of mobile internet users will have a critical advantage over retailers who rely only upon traditional marketing.

    Not surprisingly, the app market in China is rapidly growing with the rise of smartphone users. Tencent's Wechat has now hit almost 300 million users, the majority of them in China. And Baidu (BIDU), the leading Chinese search engine, has just released a new version of its Siri-like voice app making it easier to search for both information and locations while on the go. Taobao, one of the most popular ecommerce sites in China, has an app for both iOS and Androidallowing users to preview and shop on their mobile devices. Taobao is a division of Alibaba.Alibaba also offers Alipay which is similar to eBay's (EBAY) Paypal and will benefit greatly by this influx of smartphones.