In China, chatting online has become increasingly popular among white collar office workers, and online communication tools, such as QQ and MSN, have become their favorites for exchanging information.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), iResearch, and China Computerworld Research recently publicized their surveys of the instant message (IM) market in China. The result shows that China has about 100 million IM users, the most in the world. Their surveys also show that with the rapid development of broadband and network technology, audio and video communications have become major technological applications for IM users.

According to their surveys, by the end of the second quarter of this year, the number of registered IM accounts reached 828.6 million in China, with 295 million being active accounts. A report from CNNIC reveals that by the end of the second quarter of this year, China had 123 million Internet users. This means that in China, every IM user has 8 IM accounts on average, and every netizen has 6.7 IM accounts on average, the most in the world, according to industrial analysts.

The surveys show that most IM users use online communication for business purpose, and their proportion in this category has increased from 30 percent at the end of last year, to over 40 percent now. Among all office IM users, over 40 percent use more than one accounts at the same time to exchange information with others.

QQ and MSN occupy over 80 percent of the instant communication market. More and more office workers, business people, students and scientific researchers are using audio and video tools to communicate.
 
(chinanews.cn September 2, 2006)