In the first half of 2017, financial management software and mobile apps continued to develop, while offline providers of such services have shifted from opposition into a more productive mindset seeking partnerships and cooperation even as interest rates in online loan and savings applications fall.
Users of online entertainments shifted further towards mobile internet use, with users of music-, game-, video-, and culture-related mobile apps increasing in number by 4%; among them, the number of mobile game users grew by 9.6%.
The income of game studios and similar enterprises has grown significantly, and the IP and copyrights of such companies show signs of becoming a core source of income domestically and abroad.
Services, such as online education, ride-sharing, limousine booking, and bicycle rental have also seen significant growth in their user bases, with 144 million, 278 million, 217 million, and 106 million users, respectively.
609 million distinct users logged onto search engines in the first half of 2017, accounting for 81.1% of all internet users and growing by 7.07 million over 2016 (1.2%). Click To Tweet The number of people who accessed news online rose to 625 million (83.1% of all internet users) in the first half of 2017, up 1.7% from the year prior. Click To Tweet The number of people using social networking and communication sites or apps rose modestly, with 84.3% of internet users using WeChat Moments and 65.8% using QZone. Weibo’s penetration into the internet market continued to grow, increasing by 1.6 percentage points to 38.7%. Click To TweetDownload the details in the updated China Internet Insights report here.