Neumob brings its app acceleration technology to China

There are many reasons a user might choose to uninstall your app. Maybe it is annoying. Maybe it doesn’t work. Maybe it just plain sucks.

But increasingly, and especially in markets where 4G data speeds are a mere dream, consumers uninstall apps — or even avoid installing them in the first place — because of speed and file size.

Today, Neumob has announced a notable expansion of its app acceleration technology, with a particular focus on speeding app performance in China.

Neumob already operates across 64 metropolitan areas, including Europe and North America, but today’s expansion is significant because China has unique challenges, especially for Western app developers that want to launch there.

“Aside from the marketplace there being set up to favor Chinese-made apps, the most important hindrance is China’s networks themselves,” Jeff Kim, CEO at Neumob, told me. “All app traffic must travel a patchwork of congested 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, each subject to a Chinese government firewall that further slows traffic down. Our customers often find that even when they’re able to gain traction with Chinese consumers, their app performance suffers as a result, with slow load times and increased in-app errors being the norm.”

That’s important in a marketplace where smartphones and apps rule. In the U.S., 72 percent of online users own a smartphone, but in China, that rises massively to 92 percent — over 599 million people.

So how does Neumob work?

“Neumob accelerates everything in an app — every image, every third-party call, and every embedded ad network SDK — thereby bypassing the country’s endemic network problems and making for a smooth, pleasurable app experience,” Kim said.

Implementation is relatively painless. App owners install a two-line SDK into their app or game, and Neumob handles the rest.

Of course, speed is just one important factor when it comes to the Chinese app market. We shouldn’t ignore the other big challenges ahead if Western app developers want to win in China, and that includes cultural and localization best practices that have to be adhered to.

“There are several behemoth one-app-that-does-many-things apps that dominate app traffic in China, with WeChat being the most popular,” Kim said. “We don’t see many of these in Western markets. Because an Android developer doesn’t truly have a legal Google Play marketplace to deploy to in China, their main localization play is to develop versions for China’s local app stores, like Baidu’s and Tencent’s, and to (obviously) ensure language localization. Piracy has been a traditional concern as well: Many popular apps have duplicates available in app stores, which calls forth the need for a local, market-savvy partner to help ensure that duplicates are removed and that other local rules and regulations are complied with.”

Neumob’s new acceleration nodes include multiple points of presence in Beijing and Shanghai. Also, it has added to its network in Guangzhou, Qingdao, and Hong Kong. Neumob has also added new points of presence across India, Sweden, Australia, and elsewhere, as part of this latest expansion.

While Neumob provides startup app developers with up to 50GB of free app acceleration and error reduction every month, in virtually all areas of the world, access to the newly expanded acceleration network in China requires integration of its 2-line SDK, which is available on the Neumob Enterprise plan, details of which may be obtained on request.