Chinese entrepreneurs pioneering progress in global mobile internet application

Chinese entrepreneurs are working towards faster development in global mobile internet application by continuously merging technological innovation with their business models.

Chinese firm Deeper Journey's Firefly platform — an innovative, fully programmatic content creation system that integrates diverse advertising resources — has evolved from a single Google Ad Manager source into a mix of Adsense, GAM and Taboola ads.

By embedding artificial intelligence (AI) functions, Firefly revolutionized global dynamic ad operations, boasting more than 10 million daily active users, including 550,000 in the United States, with cumulative ad value exceeding $30 million.

Meanwhile, the development of Vlife — the world's first true rich media dynamic lock screen engine — offered a complete solution from lock screen to wallpaper and delivered a superior user experience, leading Vlife products to achieve global success with over 300 million installation users and more than 400,000 daily activations.

Speakers at the 35th Chinese Business Innovation Forum and the 13th China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Influence Summit — Shanghai Conference said that Chinese entrepreneurs will continue driving product iterations, fostering thriving niche markets, and setting a new benchmark for the global mobile internet industry.

The conference, held in Shanghai in mid-August with a theme of "Unleashing Enterprise Productivity, Rising with the Eastern Tide", attracted more than 300 well-known entrepreneurs, senior investors, authoritative industry experts, and pioneering innovators from around the country, aiming to inspire business creativity and drive the innovation economy.

As one of the most influential platforms for business exchange and innovation practices in China, the event focused on business innovation pathways and entrepreneurial ecosystem upgrades as part of the new economic landscape.

More than 60,000 viewers watched via photo live-streaming and other online channels, while Zhang Liang, CEO of Deeper Journey, was awarded the "2025 Industry Influential Figure" Award.

The award was as a result of Zhang exhibiting the pioneering spirit of Chinese entrepreneurs in industrial innovations.

With the rapid rise of the smartphone market, Zhang foresaw the demand for cloud-based contact synchronization and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news readers as two key functions, and launched the Mimo product in 2008, the industry's first mobile software adopting a client-side DIY model, sparking a wave of imitation in the mobile internet industry. Mimo became the most active mobile application community on the Chinese mainland and the first mobile social networking product in the country.

"People not only hope that the content of the mobile phone lock screen can meet personalized needs, but also expect that the entire mobile phone system theme can adopt a unified personalized style," said Zhang.

For a long time, mobile phone brand manufacturers have been confronted with the challenge of inspiring enough designers to create innovative themes to meet the growing demand for customization, he said.

Zhang's designer ecosystem community "City of Design" has become the world's largest mobile theme creation and distribution platform, generating an annual market size exceeding 500 million yuan ($70.4 million).

With the arrival of the fully digital era, and online fiction and short-drama markets experiencing a global boom, Zhang founded Deeper Journey in 2023, focusing on innovative advertising services in the overseas mobile internet sector.