News

Mobile Internet Swells in China

(14 Oct 2010, BWCS Staff)

The number of mobile Internet users in China has swollen to reach 292 million, according to official figures. Speaking at a telecoms get-together in Beijing, the deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's telecom division, Liu Jie, said that at the end of September around 35.1% of the country's 833 million mobile users had accessed the Internet via their mobile phones. China currently has a mobile penetration rate of 63%.

At the end of the first half of 2010, mobile internet users in the country totaled 214 million. During the six months to the end of June 2010 the mobile Internet market generated revenues of around US$3.6 billion), with data traffic accounting for 59.1% of this and revenues from apps the other 40.1%.

The revenue figures come despite a government move in March to block many web pages from mobile phones as it strove to "clean up the internet." Government officials said they had shut down no fewer than 140,000 mobile WAP sites offering pornography.

The campaign against adult services online was launched in August last year by nine government and Communist Party of China (CPC) departments, involving the media, health services and of course the police. Particular attention was lavished on Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui where many of the WAP sites were registered. The Beijing government reported that over 150,000 items of lewd content were deleted from or blocked on the Internet in the capital alone.

In January of this year, search engine giant Google, having threatened to move out of China and close its Chinese language websites, announced it would also delay the launch of its new mobile handsets in the country. Google, which is working hard to increase its presence in the mobile sector, has developed two mobile phones specially tailored for the Chinese market.



Back

website by gomango