Majority of Chinese web users are now mobile, says report

22 Jul 2014

For the first time in China, the number of people accessing online material via mobile has surpassed that of users accessing the web through PC, with a growth 83.4pc as of June.

With two of its largest mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi and Huawei, proving to be the fastest-growing mobile companies in the world, the number of users in the most populous country on Earth are also shifting internet usage to mobile, according to The Next Web.

Now, a recent report from the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) has put a numerical value on this usage, showing that between June 2010 and June 2014, the number of mobile web users grew by 17.5pc.

Meanwhile, the percentages of users accessing online content via desktop and laptop have decreased relatively slowly but consistently, at a rate of 0.1pc to 69.6pc and 0.4 to 43.7pc, respectively. This results in a total of 80.9pc, marking the first time the percentage of users going online via PC as lower than mobile.

The report also detailed the total number of internet users in China is just under half the population, with 632m internet users, of which 527m use mobile.

It is understood that Chinese users are also rapidly turning to mobile payments. The number of Chinese consumers paying through smartphones totalled 205m as of June this year, a growth rate of 42pc in just six months.

China mobile image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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