Mobile revenues for Qunar in the July-September period accounted for around three-quarters of its total, driven by new users transacting via its apps.
For the quarter, revenues from mobile came in at $153.5 million, precisely 76.4% of the total. In the same period last year mobile was around 40% of the total. The revenue figure was 381% up year-on-year.
On the earnings call, Yilu Zhao, Qunar's CFO, added that between 70% and 80% of the mobile transactions are done through its apps and that its mobile traffic is independent of its former majority shareholder Baidu.
"The majority" of the 70 million mobile transaction users in the quarter were new to Qunar, she added. An offline marketing campaign is driving new users to Qunar, and has been since it was launched in the second half of 2014. The plan is to continue this campaign into the second half of 2016.
Qunar uses the phrase "cohorts" to segment people who transact with it for the first time during a specific quarter. Zhao says that it is able to track the cohorts' behaviour to determine retention and repeat purchase rates, giving it "a high level of visibility into its financial trajectory".
That financial trajectory for the next quarter is for revenues to jump by 105% - 125% year-on-year, with gross profit - its preferred metric - up by 85% - 105%.
It appears very much business as usual at Qunar, with the many and various questions about the tie-up flat-batted by Qunar bosses with the same response given by Ctrip's management on its earnings call earlier this month - it's still early days and the teams are "currently exploring ways through which we can effectively cooperate..."
But Qunar's focus on mobile is one clear area of distinction between it and Ctrip. Qunar's CEO CC Zhuang noted that "the overlap of the user base in the two companies is also small and there is much more room to grow..."
One question raised the possibility that the Ctrip/Qunar tie-up might attract some antitrust interest in China. Zhuang is confident that this will not be the case, as Ctrip and Qunar's combined share of the overall travel and transportation market in China was still small (although the question was asked in the context of their having more 50% of the flights market).
Zhuang's response also hinted that the Ctrip and Qunar were looking beyond China. "It may be that in the long-run we are not China-focussed, maybe we are an Asia-Pacific company, so if we look at Asia-Pacific transportation market we are single digits."