Nearly 10 percent of Chinese Internet users switched e-mail accounts from June to August this year because the service providers offered bigger storage, according to a survey made by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

About 33.8 percent of Chinese Internet users got new e-mail accounts in the three months before the CNNIC started the survey in September this year, 25.2 percent of whom did it because the service providers offered bigger storage, said the survey report released by CNNIC on Tuesday.

Bigger storage capacity was the No. 2 reason why Chinese Internet users applied for new e-mail accounts, the report said.

Another 34.1 percent got new e-mail accounts because they need more e-mail addresses, which was the No. 1 reason.

And only 4.5 percent applied for their first e-mail account, the report said.

Leading Internet service providers in China Yahoo, Sina and Netease provided free e-mail service of a storage capacity over 1 GB since Google Inc. launched free mail of 1 GB in April this year.

However, the most frequently used e-mail addresses, accounting for 25.1 percent of the total, usually measure between 10 to 49 MB, while those above 1 GB account for only 6.3 percent.

The report also revealed that 83 percent of the e-mail users possessed one to three addresses, and 96.5 percent of Chinese netizens had free e-mail accounts, often featured by large storage capacities.

Only 8 percent of netizens applied charged e-mail services because they believed that they would be less harassed by junk mail, more secure and stable, as well as larger in storage, said the report.

E-mail users aged between 18 to 24 accounted for 43.6 percent of the total, and the second largest group were netizens between 25 to 30, taking up 26.1 percent, it said.

Some 45.8 percent of the e-mail users in China received college education and above. The largest group of users, in terms of occupation, is students, taking up 35.2 percent of the total, which were followed by professional technicians and teachers, respectively 11.6 percent and 11.4 percent.

The report, based on a sample survey by CNNIC from Sept. 9 to 30 this year, collected information from telephone interviews with 2,627 Chinese netizens.