With over 700 million active smartphone users, China's mobile market is insane in scale. But sheer numbers aside, what makes it really impressive? China has long been a mere manufacturer. Products, usually designed elsewhere, get assembled here. And when China's mobile industry creates, it's often churning out low-end handsets and that occasional shameless copycat app. But one former Silicon Valley insider says China is no longer a factory hub lacking imagination. It has become a hotbed of crazy innovation. "People think about China as copycats, but they don't expect to see the kind of innovation that they see here when they arrive," says Hugo Barra, former Google executive and current Vice President of Chinese cult smartphone maker Xiaomi.
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Contrary to its reputation, China is a hotbed of mobile innovation
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Beijing's Momo flirting app predates its Western version, Tinder
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WeChat is becoming an extended operating system for millions of mobile users
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The government tries to make things easy for innovators
For networking (read: flirting): @placeholder predates Tinder and has over 100 million registered users.