China overtakes US in number of web users

China has surpassed the US to become the world's largest internet market by number of users, a research firm said on Thursday.

The estimate by Beijing-based BDA was based on data from China Internet Network Information Center, which indicated that the country's internet users totalled 210 million at the end of 2007. Nielsen/NetRatings put the US web population at 216 million for the same period, BDA said.

"Based on these sources and the assumption that these markets have continued to grow in 2008 to date at the same rates that they grew in 2007, we can conclude that China has by now comfortably surpassed the US as the world's largest internet population," analyst Bin Liu said in a statement.

BDA added that it expected e-commerce to become the next boom sector in China, as businesses take advantage of the mass market of consumers already online.

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