A Chinese passenger uses her smartphone to surf the Internet in a subway train in Beijing, Dec 14, 2015.[Photo/IC]

Mobile phones have become a major platform for Chinese internet users to get news, with news apps stealing a march, according to an annual report on the development of Chinese new media released by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on Tuesday.

The report finds that 93.5 percent respondents access news through their mobile phones, with 77.4 percent checking every day and 17.8 percent several times a week. As of December 2015, there were 688 million internet users in China, and 90.1 percent of them (or 622 million) were mobile users.

When asked about their preferred platform, 68.3 percent favor using news apps while 57.8 percent opt for browsers. WeChat takes the third place, with WeChat Moment attracting 48.3 percent news seekers and WeChat Subscriptions 45 percent users. Weibo, another social media, is the choice of 35.3 percent respondents.

According to the study, 88.6 percent respondents have downloaded news apps. More than half have at least three news apps on their phones while nearly 40 percent have 3 to 5 news apps.

The report also indicates that internet penetration in China has reached 50.3 percent, 3.9 percent higher than the global average level and 10.1 percent higher than the Asian average level.

There are 4.23 million websites in the country and growing at an annual rate of 26.3 percent. E-commerce trade volume has reached 20 trillion yuan ($3.06 trillion). The internet economy scales up at a rate of 30 percent.

However, some problems such as cyber crimes and copyright infringement have also risen with the rapid development of new media, said CASS Vice-President Li Peilin.