Mobile phones have overtaken computers as the most popular device for getting online in China, the government said on July 19, as it announced the number of web users had hit 538 million. China has the world's biggest online population, with nearly four out of 10 of its 1.3 billion people now using the web, according to a report from the state-linked China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).
Until this year, a majority of Chinese web users accessed the Internet via computers. But smartphones have allowed more and more rural Chinese to go online in areas not covered by fixed-line networks, the report said. Nearly 52 percent of users who started to use the Internet this year are from the countryside.
"Smartphones are more and more powerful and there is a new wave of mobile application innovation," the report said.
"Meanwhile, mobile phone prices continued to drop - the emergence of smartphones under 1,000 yuan ($157) sharply lowered the threshold for using the devices and encouraged average mobile phone users to become mobile web surfers." The 538 million people online in China was an increase of around five percent from the end of last year.
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