On January 22, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released its 37th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China (hereinafter referred to as the Report). According to the Report, as of December 2015, China had 688 million Internet users, accounting for half of the total population of the country, with an Internet penetration rate of 50.3%. Meanwhile, mobile Internet has led to new social lifestyles, the “Internet+” action plan has promoted the development of enterprises in a sustained way, and the impact of the Internet on the whole society has entered a new stage.

 Half of Chinese have accessed the Internet, and the proportion of mobile Internet users to the total Internet users has exceeded 90%

As of December 2015, China had 688 million Internet users, accounting for over half of the total population of the country, with an Internet penetration rate of 50.3%. Of which, the number of new Internet users was 39.51 million in the year, with a growth rate of 6.1%, up 1.1 percentage point over 2014, showing an increase of the growth rate of the size of Internet users. 

According to the Report, mobile phones were becoming an increasingly important means to access the Internet and the main factor for driving the growth of the size of Internet users. As of December 2015, the number of mobile Internet users in China had reached 620 million, and 90.1% of the Internet users used mobile phones to access the Internet. The number of Internet users who only used mobile phone to access the Internet had reached 127 million, accounting for 18.5% of the total Internet users of the country.

As of December 2015, the total number of registered .cn domain names had reached 16.36 million, with an annual growth of 47.6%, accounting for 52.8% of that of all domain names of China, and it had surpassed the .de domain names of Germany and become the world’s biggest Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD).

Meanwhile, under the backdrop of the active demands for international communications based on the Internet, China’s international Internet gateway bandwidth hit a new high in 2015. As of December 2015, China had 5,392,116 Mbps of international Internet gateway bandwidth, with an annual growth of 30.9%, indicating that China’s capability of international communication network had been significantly enhanced.

Thanks to the great efforts of government and enterprises in the development of “Smart City” and “Wireless City”, wireless network had popularized rapidly in public areas. Mobile phone, tablet PC and intelligent TV had given a boost to the use of home wireless network, and up to 91.8% of the Internet users had the experience of accessing the Internet via Wi-Fi, up 8.6% over June 2015. Currently, Wi-Fi has become the most popular way for Internet users to access the Internet in fixed locations. 

Thanks to the gradual improvement of the Internet environment and the rapid popularization of Internet access via mobile phone, the demands for mobile Internet applications have been constantly stimulated. In 2015, personal applications covering basic application, business transaction, e-finance, online entertainment and public services developed in a diversified way. In particular, mobile online payment grew rapidly. As of December 2015, the number of mobile online payment users of China had reached 358 million, with an annual growth rate of 64.5%, and the utilization ratio of mobile online payment had increased from 39.0% at the end of 2014 to 57.7%.

In addition, the soaring number of Internet users and strong market demands triggered a wave of development of wider Internet applications. In 2015, 110 million Internet users received online education via the Internet, 152 million Internet users received online medical services, 96.64 million persons hailed taxi via the Internet, and 21.65 million persons hailed special car via the Internet. By relying on its characteristics of great popularity, convenience and sharing, the Internet has penetrated into the field of public services, accelerating the increase of the level of public services and ensuring effective improvement of people’s livelihood and social harmony. 

The daily operations of Chinese enterprises relied increasingly on the Internet. According to the Report, as of December 2015, the proportion of Chinese enterprises using computers, the Internet and fixed broadband had rose by 4.8%, 10.3% and 8.9%, reaching 95.2%, 89.0% and 86.3% respectively. The total number of websites of China reached 4.23 million, representing a growth of 880 thousand, or 26.3%, over 2014. Meanwhile, the number of web pages of China topped 200 billion for the first time. Chinese enterprises began to more and more widely use Internet tools to make communications and exchanges, acquire and release information as well as carry out internal management, laying a solid foundation for “Internet+” applications in enterprises. 

The Internet was no longer merely an auxiliary means, and Chinese enterprises began to bring the “Internet+” action plan into their strategic plans as an important part. It was mainly embodied by facts that enterprises attached importance to professional Internet talents, carried out online selling and purchasing, and used mobile terminals to conduct marketing and promotional activities.

According to the Report, as of December 2015, 34.0% of the enterprises had set up special Internet-related posts at community level, 24.4% of the enterprises had organized Internet-related teams, and the executives of 13.0% of the enterprises spearheaded the development of Internet plans. Driven by the rapid development of China’s online retail market, the proportion of online sale of enterprises and that of online purchase had exceeded 30%, with a rapid growth of sales volume. Thanks to the wide application of internet mobile terminals, mobile marketing has become an important channel for business promotion. Amongst those enterprises that have carried out mobile marketing activities, the utilization rate of WeChat marketing and promotion had reached 75.3%, becoming the most popular mobile marketing & promotion method for enterprises.