A primary school student learns dance moves with an online program on an internet-enabled television at her home in Danzhai county, Guizhou province, on Feb 6. (HUANG XIAOHAI / CHINA DAILY)

Zhang Jing, a 31-year-old teacher from an educational institution in Beijing, has found a new form of entertainment to enrich her daily life amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

With rapidly increasing traffic, mobile app companies should think of how to maintain customers when the epidemic ends.

Sun Mengzi, senior analyst at Beijing­based market consult­ ancy Analysys

"I like singing and usually join a group of friends to sing and drink in a bar for a few hours or go to mini KTVs on weekends. However, I need to change my lifestyle as I have to stay home and chose remote work to avoid infection due to the epidemic," Zhang said.

Zhang can now sing alone with Changba, a mobile karaoke app. She can record her singing, upload it to an internet platform or share it on social media. Other users can browse her songs, comment and send virtual flowers if they enjoyed the way she belted out a ditty.

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In the past, Zhang would also go out for dinner with her friends.

These days, she checks out online recipes and has learned to cook with the help of Xiachufang.

A string of applications such as a mobile karaoke app, an online recipe-sharing community, online fresh food sales and mobile fitness communities are gaining traction among young generations in China as they spend more time at home due to the outbreak.

Changba, which literally translates into Singing Bar, provides an online platform for music fans and allows users to share their performances with friends.

"People are more willing to use mobile karaoke applications during the epidemic period, and our users' growth rate, retention rate and activity level surged dramatically," said Chen Hua, founder and CEO of Changba.

Chen said the impact of the disease on people's daily lifestyles is comprehensive, and the offline music performance market is a good example of that.

"The internet has become the pivot of people's life, work and entertainment," Chen said.

Changba Live House has provided online performance opportunities for 100,000 musicians. "We cooperated with Modern Sky, one of China's largest indie record companies, with 200,000 users watching the online concert on the first day of livestreaming," Chen said.

A girl makes a pancake with her mother at home in Chongqing on Feb 6. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Chen added that the main users of Changba are music lovers and their fans usually range from 20 to 30 years old. "We found that youths under 20 swarmed into our app amid the outbreak, and older users have come back. In addition, they tend to spend more time on mobile karaoke apps, and their frequency of use each day is also rising."

Chen said the epidemic is having an influence on the company's offline business with over 700 Maisong KTVs across the nation. "Our competitiveness lies in the low operating costs. I believe this business will witness explosive growth when the outbreak ends because users still have strong demand for an offline entertainment experience."

Xiachufang has experienced a temporary disruption of its service due to the influx of a large number of users during the Spring Festival.

Xiachufang founder Wang Xusheng said data flow from new users has grown 10 to 20 percent daily, and the company has expanded the capacity of its servers.

"We hope to help those eating at home eat better," Wang said. "We found people like baking during the epidemic. They take out the electric oven that hasn't been used for a long period of time and bake bread and cakes together with their children."

He added users are also willing to upload photos of food they made to the platform and share their feelings about cooking. "A group of users can feel the happiness in the process of cooking."

Online sales of daily necessities and fresh food have likewise witnessed robust growth.

JD Daojia, the local on-demand retail platform of Dada Group, said overall sales revenue increased 374 percent year-on-year during the Lunar New Year holiday.

The consumption of meat, vegetables and fruit jumped 710 percent, 440 percent and 380 percent, respectively, compared with the same period last year.

Data from app tracker Analysys Qianfan showed that in January, monthly active users of mobile apps from the whole network reached 1.02 billion, a slight increase from the previous month. The daily average usage period rose by 1.5 percent month-on-month to 6.15 hours.

Sun Mengzi, a senior analyst at Beijing-based market consultancy Analysys, said the epidemic forced app firms to improve their operations. Facing soaring orders, fresh food e-commerce platforms needed to boost the supply capacity of its support chain so customers can get their orders on time.

"With rapidly increasing traffic, mobile app companies should think of how to maintain customers when the epidemic ends. When the app is not a 'must have', app operators should improve their technology, content, products and services to enhance user experience and hold onto their users," she said.

Industry experts noted that due to less online shopping demand and inadequate delivery and production logistics, the e-shopping sector would ordinarily have entered an off-season during the Spring Festival.

However, the buying activities of shoppers shifted to online platforms during the outbreak. E-commerce platforms that deliver fresh produce were favored and their monthly active users generally witnessed an increase from December as shoppers refrained from frequenting brick-and-mortar supermarkets.

According to Analysys Qianfan, during the Spring Festival holiday, home delivery orders on Wumart's Dmall digital platform jumped 95.3 percent on a yearly basis, with sales volume soaring 225.7 percent year-on-year. The transaction volume of online fresh food platform Missfresh surged 350 percent year-on-year.

As many people chose to watch TV series to kill time, integrated video platforms saw significant increases in user watching time. Short video apps such as Tencent Weishi and Douyin also boomed, with MAUs surging 34.7 percent and 26.6 percent month-on-month, respectively.

Interestingly, according to Analysys Qianfan, many newly emerged users were not the mobile apps' target group.

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"The epidemic has attracted new groups of consumers, such as elderly people, which originally didn't belong to target user groups. App runners should launch improved versions to better suit new groups.

"For example, video platforms can issue underage versions to monitor users' watching behavior, while fresh produce e-commerce platforms can offer online vegetable promotions to attract the elderly," Sun of Analysis said.

She added that app firms need to have a precise user portrait of their consumers, analyze what they need and try to take advantage. "Opportunities are left for those who are prepared," she said.