Chinese netizens start using pay-for-knowledge apps

[Photo: from VCG]

A report issued by Chinese Academy of Press and Publication says, in 2017, the online reading industry was estimated to have grown into a 50-billion-plus yuan market.

The online reading craze comes amid China's explosive paying-for-knowledge industry, which has been on the rise since 2016 – an epoch year for the industry.

Mint Reading, the English classic-reading service from Chengdu, has reportedly garnered hundreds of thousands of yuan from its booking-reading users across China, even though it is only a small player in the industry, especially when compared with China's Quora-like Q&A site Zhihu and mobile learning app iGet, which already boasted annual revenue of 140 million yuan.

As another giant in the industry, Ximalaya FM, an audio sharing platform, has 450 million users and more than 5 million hosts, taking up 73 percent of the total market share, according to Zhou Xiaohan, vice president of the company.

Zhou said active users spend an average of 128 minutes on the platform's channels, which range from crosstalk shows to online courses, yet the most popular ones are on parenting, humanities, language studies, and finance.

One of the most popular channels is "Master Class," which invites famous professors to give lectures to users, including economics professor Chen Zhiwu from Yale University. Chen's course sales topped 100,000 yuan within six months after it was launched.

"This is more than just data. This shows how our Chinese users are keen for knowledge," Zhou said. 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(China Daily)