The usage of mobile services in China seems to grow rapidly lately, with the number of mobile phone owners to have accessed the Internet via their devices being said to have reached 181 million at end of August 2009. According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a survey it has conducted in the August 27-September 6 time frame, shows that the mobile Internet usage in the country has increased with 53.4 percent from the end of 2008.

According to the findings of the survey, mobile phone users in China accessed the Internet 2.2 times a day, for a period of time of 97 minutes on average. Moreover, it seems that those who own 3G-enabled handsets accessed the Internet five times a day and have browsed the Web for 105 minutes on average. “Tencent was the largest web portal in terms of the volume of visits by mobile Internet users while Baidu was the largest search engine,” DigiTimes notes citing the report.

At the same time, the news site also shows that the largest provider of email services in the country is China Mobile Communications, which is also the largest carrier in the country, and the largest one in the world by number of subscribers. During the third quarter of the ongoing year, the operator accounted for around 72.26 percent of the total number of users who accessed email from their handsets, and also received 77.91 percent of the total amount of revenues in the area.

China-based consulting company Analysys International, which provided the above figures, also shows that the total number of email accessing users in China in the third quarter was of 96.82 million, and that the revenues from the service reached 386.4 million yuan (US$56.6 million) in the time frame. Additionally, the company also said that the third quarter of 2009 saw 1.777 billion registered users for instant messaging, marking a 6.1 percent growth on quarter, and a 21 percent increase compared to the third quarter of the last year.