China Internet & New Media - Monthly App Tracker – April 2026

Research evidence excerpt

China Internet & New Media - Monthly App Tracker – April 2026

Global Markets Research

29 May 2026China Internet & New Media

EQUITY: INTERNET & NEW MEDIA

Monthly App Tracker – April 2026 Research Analysts

China Internet & New Media

Bytedance sweeps online entertainment space JialongJialong.shi@nomura.comShi - NIHK

+852 2252 1409

MAS rose 1.5% y-y and total monthly time spent increased 10.3% y-y in April Rachel Guo - NIHK

Monthly active smartphone (MAS) users in China rose 1.5% y-y to 1.28bn in April 2026. rachel.guo@nomura.com

China’s MAS has remained stable in recent months. Total monthly time spent (MTS) grew +852 2252 1400

10.3% y-y in April, largely on par with the 10.9% y-y in March 2026.

Text-to-video generation apps gaining strong traction globally

According to Sensor Tower data, both Kling [owned by Kuaishou (1024 HK, Neutral)] and

Jimeng apps (owned by Bytedance and embedded with Bytedance’s video-generation

LLM, Seedance 2.0) maintained their growth trajectory in April, with gross revenue

increasing 10% and 12% m-m, respectively. Kling app's revenue scale was ahead of

Jimeng's, and meanwhile, a structural difference existed between the two apps' revenue

sources: Kling app's revenue was primarily driven by overseas markets, while Jimeng

app's came predominantly from the domestic market. Examining recent trends, Kling saw

notable weekly revenue growth for the week beginning 11 May 2026, rising 62% on a w-w

basis and 3.6x on a y-y basis, compared to 34% w-w growth and 2.8x y-y growth for

Jimeng app. This uptick was largely attributable to Kling's overseas performance following

the viral spread of its Korean Baseball effect, i.e., allowing users to transform themselves

into spectators at a live Korean baseball game. However, it remains to be seen whether