The most widely-read Magazine and Newspaper in Hong Kong

The most read Newspaper in Hong Kong

Newspapers make us get closer to the world, to our society, or even to our daily life. It is one of the main sources for knowing what is happening around us. In this passage, we would like to present to you some of the most popular newspapers in Hong Kong.

2019 Different Media Share Ratio (%)

Credit: Ming Pao Daily

According to the research done by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019, the most popular printed newspapers is a free newspaper, followed by two paid newspapers, ranking is as follows:

1. Headline Daily
2. Apple Daily
3. Oriental Daily

While reading newspapers is something Hong Kong people cannot live without, a significant increase in the digital newspaper has resulted from the current pandemic and the fast growth of digital platforms. In 2010, the printed newspaper occupied around 71.5% of the market, followed by 28.5% web version and there was no mobile version at the time. Until 2019, the respective ratio is already shifted to 40% (printed version): 25.3% (web version): 34.7% (mobile version) respectively. Such drastic changes mean that printed newspapers are no longer the dominating sources for providing news information and also the term ‘Newspaper’ no longer means ‘printed’ version but more responding to the digital version.

In 2019, only 21% of the citizens stated that they will still be reading printed newspapers. While most of the paid newspapers have shown a declining trend in 2019, the English newspaper South China Morning Post has against all odds and maintains growth in their readership.

Mobile Newspaper

If the mobile version is becoming the mode of people reading newspapers, how about its statistics?

The mobile newspaper has grown a lot compared to the previous year and become the dominating version for users to read newspapers. Rankings are as follow:

1. Apple Daily (42.4%)
2. Hong Kong 01 (17.2 %) 
3. Oriental Daily (16.9%)

Compared to 2016, Hong Kong 01 only has around 1.4% in their mobile readership. It increased to 17.2% in 2019, showing their mobile version launching has helped the industry development.

Online Newspaper

Besides, the online platform is also steadily growing, implying that readers will absorb news information at home, in the offices or even at school through their desktops. The rankings for the online version platform are:

1. Apple Daily (25.7%) 
2. Stands News (11.6%) 
3. Oriental Daily (11.1%) 

Credibility

As we may know, a newspaper's credibility may be seen as the main factor for considering which kind of newspaper to choose. Among all the newspapers, South China Morning Post and Ming Pao Daily have long been ranked as the top two.

Awareness

In terms of paid newspaper, Apple Daily and Oriental Newspaper are the two that have the highest awareness. Headline Daily and The Standard are the top recognizable newspapers in the free newspaper and the English newspaper sections respectively.

Newspaper on Social Media

As graph one has shown, the social media usage rate is ranked as the second and has around 68% of the weekly usage rate. As for the second graph, we could see that citizens' frequency using social media to read newspapers is around 5.4 per week, which has outweighed all the other modes for newspapers.

According to Ming Pao Daily, social media is the best platform to reach audiences. It can reach around 90%, while online platforms and mobile applications are 50% and 70% respectively. The lowest is printed newspapers which can only reach 40% of the audiences. It is believed that if you choose any three of the platforms, you could reach almost 100% of the audience.

The most popular Magazine in Hong Kong

Hong Kong market has various types of magazines, ranging from fashion, daily lifestyle, family, car to business economics. It can be leisure for entertainment while it can also act as an essential investment reference to people. It all depends on what consumers's interests. In this part, we would like to introduce some of the magazines in Hong Kong, to let you have a grasp of everything.

Hearst Group, being one of the famous media companies, has corporated with South China Morning Post and published various series of magazines, namely:

Chinese

• Esquire
• ELLE Men
• Cosmopolitan HK (circulation: 58,000)
• Cosmo Bride
• Harper’s BAZAAR (circulation: 32,000)
• ELLE (circulation: 45,000)

English

• The PEAK
• HK Magazine

Some of the other magazines can be found in some Chinese media Company, such as One Media Group who covers various magazine for lifestyle and fashions, examples like:

• Ming Pao Weekly (circulation: 30,000)
• Ming’s (circulation: 30,000)
• Top Gear
• Ming Watch
• Most Kwai Chung Limited (online) etc.

Hong Kong Economics Times Holdings, being famous for its economics daily newspaper, it also published famous digital magazine with their specific platforms:

• U magazine (online platform)
• E-zone (online platform)
• iMoney (printed and e-version) etc.

New Media Group is also a media that mainly focus on publishing daily lifestyle, entertainment, gossip-related and economics magazines.

• Oriental Sunday （online)
• Economic Digest
• Weekend Weekly (online)
• Gotrip.hk etc.(online) 

Sing Tao News Corporation Limited publishing

• East Week
• Smart Parent
• East Touch 
• Caz Buyer

Here are some other magazines that are also well-known among Hong Kong people for your reference,

Others English Magazines

• Marie Claire (around 306,245 HK audiences)
• HK Tatler (circulation: 34 985)
• Prestige (2.5M online users)
• The Economist (More than 6.5M online participation rate)
• Hong Kong Business 
• Centurion
• Forbes Asia

Others Chinese Magazines

• Men’s Uno (circulation: an average of 3600 copies )
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek Chinese
• Jessica

Please browse our media page to find out more about different magazines, and you could also find the advertising rates with the website you are looking for inside the product pages.

References retrieved from:

https://www.hk01.com/社會新聞/465011/中大調查-香港01讀者份額列純網上媒體第一-七成港人手機看新聞

https://news.mingpao.com/ins/文摘/article/20200109/s00022/1578455612489/近年新聞平台的發展和變遷（文-蘇鑰機）