By the end of June 2008, 73.05 million, or almost 30% of China's 253 million netizens, were using mobile phones as wireless internet access terminals.
According to information from the "Annual Report on Digital Publishing Industry in China 2007-2008," recently released by the Chinese Institute of Publishing Sciences, these wireless users are distinctly younger, with 86% of users aged 30 years or younger. Experts point out that, from a technical perspective, there is already clear evidence that mobile phones will eventually replace the Internet as the most important broadcasting tool
The report indicates that currently Chinese mobile phone users access the Internet mainly via WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). According to the "Investigation Report on China's WAP Development 2007," released by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), there were 39 million active WAP users and 65,000 WAP sites with independent domain names by the end of March 2007, demonstrating the large scale of the wireless Internet industry already achieved. Compared with traditional Internet websites, the number of WAP sites only made up 7.7% of all websites on the Internet. However, it is still generally believed within the industry that the wireless Internet has currently reached a critical point of rapid growth. It is expected that in 2008 there will be 230 million WAP users in China with a total market scope of 22 billion yuan.
The report shows that currently, among the mobile phone publishing services used most often in China, ring tone and picture downloads accounted for 63%, wireless search accounted for 48%, playing online games and game downloads accounted for 40.4%, listening to music online and music downloads accounted for 40.2%, while online reading and e-book downloads accounted for 34.9%. What is worth noting is that 54.3% of users only visit, or prefer to visit free websites.
The report also indicates that as a new form of media, the mobile phone has much room for development.
By People's Daily Online
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