Figures released by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) have shown that China now has the largest number of internet users in the world. The report shows that more than 253 million people in China are now online, superseding the United States who declared 223 million internet users in a report in June.Since records began to be kept of how many people were online, the United States has had the largest number of net-users in the world and the US net penetration stands at some 71 per cent of the population. Conversely, the internet has only managed to reach 19 percent in China, suggesting that it will eventually vastly outnumber the US, according to the BBC.
"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's number one," said a statement from the CNNIC, the nation's official net monitoring body to the BBC.
The jump in numbers in China for net usage is remarkable, given that a similar report issued in January 2008 put the number of Chinese net-users at 210 million - a figure only reached due to a change in the CNNIC's definition of an internet user from "Chinese citizens aged 6 and above who averagely use the Internet at least one hour per week" to "Chinese citizens aged 6 and above who used the Internet in the last half year". The figures released by the CNNIC represent a 56 percent increase on the previous year and analysts predict that the figures will continue to grow by around 18 percent per year.
However, while China's population continues to embrace the World Wide Web, the country's internet economy still lags someway behind that of the US. Figures released by Analysys International intimated China's internet firms made combined revenues of $5.9billion in 2007 whereas the US combined internet revenue for the same period stood as $21.2billion. Despite this shortfall in Chinese internet revenue compared to the US, the Chinese search engine, Baidu, continued to flourish.
Partly aided by advertising sales surrounding the upcoming Beijing Olympics, Baidu recently posted an 87 percent increase in profits in the second quarter of 2008 whilst holding a market share in the Chinese search market of 63 percent. Nearest rival, Google holds 26% of the Chinese search market, while Yahoo! holds only 8 percent. Web browser and internet suite Opera recently made a huge step to increase its use on personal computers by partnering with Baidu.
A spokesman for Baidu also attributed the massive jump in revenue - which beat market forecasts - as being largely due to the positive reception of paid search by small and medium sized customers as well as larger enterprises embracing search engine marketing.
"The scalability of our business, aided by increasing numbers of large enterprise customers, helped Baidu post record results this quarter, despite some impact from the devastating earthquake in May," said chairman and chief executive Robin Li.
