Half of urban Chinese report owning, using smartphones

A new survey by Google has found almost half of urban residents in China have smartphones and have a strong attachment to their devices.

The "Our Mobile Planet: China" report by Google and market research company IPSOS surveyed 1,000 urban Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64 and found 47 percent of them owned smartphones, China's Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

Many survey respondents said smartphones have become an indispensable part of their daily lives; 69 percent said they access the Internet every day on their smartphones and 38 percent said they never leave home without the devices.

About 60 percent of the smartphone users in the survey said they would rather abandon their TV sets than their smartphones. In the Unites States that ratio is 36 percent, the report said.

Smartphones have also increasingly become shopping tools, the survey found, with 98 percent of respondents having used their phones to research products and services.

Some 69 percent of Chinese smartphone users have made purchases on their phones, compared to only 46 percent in the United States, the report said.