Wang Xuejun, a 29-year-old driver for Beijing-based Xinyue Taxi, signed up for a smartphone with China Unicom eight months ago.

"It's very important for taxi drivers like me to have two mobiles working simultaneously, receiving real time orders for taxi services with two taxi-hailing apps," said Wang.

Though he pays the almost 200 yuan added cost for the 3G phone himself each month, Wang said he makes at least 40 percent more with taxi-booking apps DidiDache and KuaidiDache.

"I can choose the orders according to the different road conditions, and finding the nearest passenger greatly reduces the car's vacancy rate," said Wang.

Not only the drivers but increasing numbers of young and white-collar customers also are turning to the taxi-hailing apps, which help reduce waiting times for cabs, especially during rush hour, by "bidding" for cabs by offering bonuses.

The latest statistics from the China E-Business Research Center showed that less than half - or about 46 percent - of China's mobile netizens had not yet tried the taxi-booking apps.

The country's total population of mobile Internet users stood at 838 million in late January, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

According to the e-commerce research center, in the first quarter of the year, DidiDache, which links with Tencent's WeChat social mobile application for bill payment, and KuaidiDache, which is backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, spent about 1.9 billion yuan on subsidies.

The move greatly helped promote the taxi-booking mobile software.

Available in 260 Chinese cities, KuaidiDache handled more than 6 million taxi bookings a day in the first three months of 2014 on average, and DidiDache, offered in almost 180 cities, said it accumulated more than 100 million users.

Though the two providers announced the end of passenger subsidies in May, both drivers and passengers said they would continue to use the apps and were even willing to pay several yuan for per booking.

The taxi-booking apps are just one example of how smartphones can help people in big cities get around more conveniently.

The earliest such apps that were related to vehicle use covered map navigation and traffic conditions, as well as tracking such things as fuel consumption, insurance payments and traffic violations.

For example, an app called "Car Butler" lets drivers record every refuel and the price, and then automatically figures out their car's average fuel consumption.

Another app, "Car Insurance Matters" lets drivers compare insurance prices from different companies just by tapping in their license plate numbers.

Xieche.net's mobile application provides maintenance and repair solutions if a car has been in an accident.

And the Autohome app displays information about and photos of new car models to help potential buyers.

Analysts said that as the numbers of people getting behind the wheel in China continue to grow, more apps and more apps will be developed.

One 34-year-old entrepreneur in Shanghai, Zhang Jinxue, is developing a mobile application called Atzuche.com.

His idea is to provide a platform on which private car owners to rent out their idle vehicles, with insurance and credit guarantees offered and managed by his company. The owners are expected to earn at least 3,000 yuan.

"For customers who want to hire a car, the price will be about 30 percent lower than those of big car rental companies. And the app will also help people find their favorite cars in the closest distance," said Zhang, who said he plans to officially launch the app in early June, initially providing service only in Shanghai.

lifangfang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/01/2014 page9)