BEIJING - China's telecom business income increased 8.9 percent year on year in the first half of 2013, with 319 million users of 3G technology, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) official said on Wednesday.

At a press conference about the communication industry, Zhu Hongren, the MIIT's chief engineer, also said that from January to May, the country's information consumption surged 19.8 percent year on year to 1.38 trillion yuan ($223.68 billion).

He said the mobile Internet sector has grown along with broadband access, online shopping and mobile payments.

Information consumption has become a new way to stimulate domestic demand and has been crucial in boosting China's economy.

Zhu said China had more than 400 million users of WeChat, a popular free WhatsApp-like messaging service with all the functions of short messaging service (SMS) by the end of June.

The application, developed by one of the country's largest information technology (IT) companies, Tencent Holdings Ltd, helped income through mobile Internet data traffic rise "56.8 percent in the January-June period," according to Zhu.

Thanks to new platforms like Wechat and Sina Weibo, China's most popular Twitter-like microblog, the country's e-commerce market size grew 38.5 percent year on year to 5.4 trillion yuan and sales of smartphones and televisions both surged over 25 percent, Zhu added.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang demanded at a meeting of the State Council, China's Cabinet, on July 12 an average growth rate of over 20 percent in information consumption in the next three years.

Zhu Jun, another MIIT's official, said the ministry is mapping out measures to realize the growth objective through building and upgrading the network communication infrastructure, enhancing the application and service of 3G technology and promoting the private capital in the telecom market.

Meanwhile, the government will push the share of education and medical treatment resources, encourage innovation in e-commerce and strengthen the safety of private network information, Zhu Jun added.