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China's Internet Growth Rate Outruns the World's AverageSHENZHEN, Jan 14, 2009 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- China recorded 298 million Internet users by the end of 2008, representing an increase of 41.9% from one year ago, with an Internet penetration rate of 22.6%, in contrast to 21.9% of the world's average, according to the latest Internet report released by IT market research firm CNNIC. However, such rate can only rank 87th globally for its big population base though the Internet has been spreading wildly in the fastest growing economy, says the report. Of the total Internet users, 90.6%, or 270 million, have logged on to the Internet via broadband network in the past six months, climbing more than 100 million from 2007. The report attributes the fast proliferation of the Internet largely to the sizzling national economy. Among other things, the Internet user addition proves to be a huge lift for valuation of Internet businesses in this country. The number of Internet domain names under .CN reached 13.57 million last year, a big rise of 50.8% from 2007. The growth rate of websites with .CN addresses hit 120.3%. For its convenience and significance, .CN domain names have been well received by businesses in the finance and automobile industries thus far. The .CN boom has driven the Internet application to a new level. The top three Internet applications were online job-hunting, blogging, and online shopping, while music download and online video sharing started to fall out of favor of Chinese young generations. As many as 84.6 million residents in the vast much less developed rural areas of China were able to get access to the Internet by the end of last year, increasing 60% from a year earlier. The big surge in rural Internet users will further narrow the economic gap and disparity between cities and villages, which has been much fretted about triggering social unrest. Western China saw the fastest growth of Internet users as the Internet is reaching its saturation in the developed Eastern and Central China. By December 31, 2008, China recorded 298 million Internet users and 117 million mobile Internet users, according to the latest report released by IT market research firm CNNIC on China's Internet industry. The report says that surfing the Web via mobile phones, laptop computers, or other portal digital devices is taking on in this fastest growing economy. The number of mobile Internet users was doubled to 117 million in 2008 as telecom carriers paid more attention to mobile Internet and prices of mobile phones were falling. Source: www.cnstock.com (January 14, 2009) |