CNNIC: China's Rural Mobile Internet Use Up 79% in '09
CNNIC, 4/16/10
The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) recently released its report on the State of Rural Internet Development for 2009, saying that China's rural internet users reached 106.81 mln in 2009, up 26.3% YoY with 22.2 mln additional users. Of those, approximately 71.89 mln were mobile internet users, up 79.3% YoY or over 30 mln users compared to 2008, outpacing growth in overall users.
The number of internet users going online using desktop computers fell to 68%, while the number using handsets was up nearly 20 percentage points to reach 67.3%. In contrast, 160 mln of China's 277 mln urban internet users used a mobile phone to go online, reaching only 57.5% of urban internet users.
Overall internet penetration was 44.6% among urban residents, while only 15% in rural areas.
The report examined differences in online application usage by urban and rural users: use of e-commerce and communication tools was clearly more common among urban users than rural ones, especially online shopping and online payment, which was adopted by 31.7% and 27.7% of urban users, respectively, compared to 17.6% and 15.1% of rural users, respectively. Use of online entertainment was much closer. For the two most popular forms of online entertainment, online music and online gaming, usage reached 83.8% and 68.6% respectively among urban users, and 82.7% and 69.9% respectively among rural users.
Keywords: wireless national statistics online gaming e-commerce Internet penetration rural online music CNNIC Internet users mobile Internet online payment
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