The report also said that following a boom in the stock market, the number of people using mobile apps to trade shares rose by 50 percent in the first half of this year to 5.6 million.
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A total of 18.94 million new users – more than the entire population of Chile – were added in the first six months of this year, the China Internet Network Information Center reported on Wednesday (local time).
The study also found that almost 89 percent of China’s internet customers went online using smartphones, compared with 85.8 percent at end-2014.
“Lower device costs and better surfing experiences will help smartphones overtake personal computers and tablets as the device of choice for Internet users in China“, said Liu Bing, deputy director of the CNNIC.
Tablets fell to 33.7 per cent, with the report predicting that this will drop further as large-screen smartphones, or “phablets”, continue to proliferate in China. Smartphones are boosting the use of mobile internet services and users, the report also shows.
The population of mobile internet users hit 594 million, accounting for 88.9% of the country’s total internet population. Smartphones led to the addition of 36.79 million web users across the country in the first six months of the year. At that rate, it will be 2022 before even half of China’s rural residents are online (although admittedly the rural internet penetration growth rate is likely to speed up, not remain static).
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This however is expected to rise as more people from the rural areas go online, the centre said.
