Rapid development as China goes mobile

With the popularity of mobile Internet on the rise, China now ranks second only to the United States in downloads. And it had more than 100 mobile-application stores and about 1 million app developers as of July, a China Mobile executive said on Tuesday.

Li Zhengmao, vice-president of China Mobile, made the remarks at the 2013 International Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing.

China has seen a rapid mobile Internet development, giving birth to diverse applications in the fields of instant messaging, music, video and gaming. Those mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular with consumers.

WeChat, an instant-messaging tool developed by Tencent Holdings in 2011, has more than 600 million users, outperforming international rivals such as Line and WhatsApp.

Li said China Mobile's Mobile Market, the first store selling mobile-phone applications by a telecom carrier, has 360 million registered users. Mobile Market saw more than 500 million downloads in the first half of this year.