Half Of China’s Population Accesses The Internet Via Mobile

Globally, the smartphone market may be getting saturated, but in China, the mobile internet has reached 50 percent for the first time ever, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the government agency in charge of the internet.

According to a report by TechCrunch, citing CNNIC, as of December, there were 731 million Chinese internet users, which represents 53.2 percent of the population in China and is almost on par with the population of internet users in Europe, which stands at 743 million people. CNNIC also revealed that 95 percent of internet users in China are accessing it via mobile. That amounts to 695 million people, or half of China’s 1.4 billion citizens, using the internet via a mobile device.

During the last year, CNNIC reported China added 42.99 million new users of the internet, with web adoption growing at a rate of 6.2 percent, which is higher than the global average. A year ago, CNNIC said it had 688 million internet users, which was a 6 percent increase from the 649 million reported in Jan. 2015. At that time, the mobile internet usage rate stood at 90.1 percent. CNNIC also reported that 168 million people in China use ride-hailing apps, marking a 38 percent increase from 46.16 million. Meanwhile, WeChat is the leading app in the country, with 80 percent of all internet users in China using the messaging app.

Not surprisingly, given the growth of mobile internet, mobile payments are also picking up in China. The country’s millennials are driving huge trends in China’s mobile payments and commerce ecosystem, with the potential to unlock even more growth as adoption continues to surge.