China's first continuous mobile phone research panel goes live

China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest smartphone market

Global market research expert Kantar Worldpanel ComTech is launching a new Chinese mobile phone consumer panel, making it the first continuous panel to gather representative mobile phone data in China. Due to industry demand, the panel has been created to provide insight into the world’s largest mobile phone market and coincides with the recent news that China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest smartphone market.

Nic Lewisohn, Managing Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, explains further: “The Chinese telecoms market is already the largest in the world with over one billion mobile phone users, and this market is only getting larger as the Chinese Middle Class, with its considerable disposable income, continues to grow. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech already works with the majority of the world’s major handset brands and operators and our expansion into China has been driven through a desire to provide our clients with the same level of insight in China as they receive from us elsewhere. This includes insights on mobile phone ownership, sales, usage, churn, loyalty and pricing.

“We are really excited to be the first to launch a continuous telecoms consumer panel in China, a market which can be hugely complex, but which presents a fantastic commercial opportunity for mobile brands. China is strategically very important to our global clients and locally very different from other markets. ComTech clients demand cross-market consistency and high quality and our large representative panel will provide a detailed insight which both global and local brands can use to execute their sales and marketing strategies in China.”

The new Kantar Worldpanel ComTech service will use Kantar Worldpanel’s existing operation in China to conduct its interviews. Individuals from city tiers one to four will form this new panel, culminating in 180,000 completed interviews per year. The first results from this panel are expected in late July and will provide a detailed insight into China’s mobile marketplace.