Chinese consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones to shop online, pay for goods and services and watch videos as smartphones become ever more commonplace, according to a new government report on the behavior of the country’s online population.
The number of mobile Internet users in China last year rose to 500 million, up 8 percent from a year ago, according to a bi-annual survey conducted by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). More than four out of every five (81 percent) of the country’s total online population of 618 million (as of Dec. 31) are now using smartphones to access the Internet, according to the report.
CNNIC researchers also found that in China, already the world’s largest smartphone market, people going online for the first time overwhelming preferred to access the Internet with their phones: 73 percent of new users are surfing the Web with handsets, compared with 29 percent using desktop computers and 17 percent using laptops.
The top activity for mobile Internet users was mobile messaging, followed by online news and then online search. However, the fastest growing activities on mobile phones were online shopping which jumped 16 percent to 144 million users; online payment which grew 12 percent to 125 million users; and online video viewing which rose 17 percent to 247 million.
The report attributed the spike in China’s mobile-commerce growth to three factors; namely the unique functions the smartphone, such as QR code scanning, that allows for a more efficient mobile shopping experience, the expansion of the mobile-commerce ecosystem by e-commerce players like Alibaba Group, and the ability of mobile phones to provide localized e-commerce services.
Most mobile users did their online shopping in the comfort of their home, with 53 percent saying they browsed their smartphones for bargains and deals right before bed and another 27 percent saying they preferred to shop online and eat at the same time. Compared to shopping on the desktop or laptop computer, 21 percent of online shoppers surveyed said they preferred to shop on their mobile phones and said they spent a longer time on shopping websites on their mobile phones than on computers.
The growth in mobile-commerce is buttressed by the underlying growth in Chinese e-commerce industry. Last year, China’s e-commerce sector grew 42 percent to RMB 1.85 trillion ($305 billion) in terms of transaction value, according to iResearch statistics. Alibaba Group’s Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com platforms are the leading e-commerce websites in China with nearly a billion product listings. Last year, the number of e-commerce users rose 25 percent to 302 million, a whisker away from topping the entire population of the United States. With only 43 percent of total Internet users shopping online, there is still plenty of headroom growth.
The report also showed a dramatic increase in users utilizing the Internet for lifestyle-related services. For example, travel bookings online rose 62 percent while group-buying was up 69 percent. Online payment and online banking services were also higher last year, registering 18 percent and 13 percent user growth respectively.
