Almost 97 million people used a smartphone app to book a taxi last year, according to a report by the government-run China Internet Network Information Center.

In the same period, almost 22 million used apps to order a limousine, it said in a report published yesterday.

The figures were extrapolated from the findings of a poll of 60,000 people conducted by the center.

It did not provide comparative figures.

Uber, Didi Kuaidi, Yidao and Shenzhou are among the companies that provide taxi-hailing apps.

There were 688 million Internet users in China at the end of last year, or about half the total population. About 90 percent of them access the Internet via mobile devices, the report said.

More than 28 percent of China's Internet users live in rural areas, Liu Bing, the center's deputy director, was quoted as saying.

About 77 percent of people who access the Internet use social networking platforms, like Weibo, he said.

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