China now has 557M mobile internet users, grand total of 649M netizens

China now has 557 million mobile internet users, according to data released today by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). That figure for the end of 2014 is up from half a billion at the end of 2013.

For a sense of scale, India has 300 million mobile internet users at present. But China’s growth is slowing, while India’s growth spurts.

Here’s China’s growth in mobile web users since 2007:

The CNNIC also revealed today that China now has a grand total of 649 million web users. That’s up from 618 million at the end of 2013. Here’s the stratospheric growth since a mere 111 million in 2005.

Ecommerce up, Weibo down

The new data (the full PDF file is embedded here) also calculated the number of China’s web users across certain activities. While ecommerce and social media in general went up, microblogging sites like Sina Weibo saw a drop in users.

China's internet, 2014 vs 2013: IM users up 10%, e-commerce up 20%, online payment up 17%, online banking up 13%, microblogs DOWN 11%

— Paul Carsten (@PaulCarsten) February 3, 2015

See: 1.3 billion smartphones shipped in 2014; Xiaomi ends year ranked 5th globally