CHENGDU -- China's online audiovisual sector has surpassed all other internet applications by user base, reaching 1.099 billion users as of December 2025, according to an industry report released on Wednesday.

This sector remains the country's most widely used digital service, showing strong resilience and user appeal amid intensifying competition online, said the research report, unveiled by the China Netcasting Services Association at an online audiovisual conference in Chengdu, capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan province.

The industry's market size climbed to nearly 1.29 trillion yuan (about $188 billion) in 2025, up 5.3 percent year on year, while the number of enterprises in this sector exceeded 800,000, with micro-sized firms accounting for 87.8 percent, the report said.

Short videos continued to drive growth, standing out as the only major internet application category to post gains in both user numbers and usage rate. They also served as the main entry point for new users, with 44.6 percent of first-time internet users accessing the web via short video apps.

User engagement also strengthened. Average daily viewing time reached 201 minutes, while micro dramas saw rapid growth, overtaking long-form video to rank second among audiovisual formats, following short videos.

The report also highlighted the rising role of artificial intelligence (AI). More than 2 billion AI-generated audio and video clips were produced in 2025, soaring 14-fold year on year, with over half of respondents regularly consuming AI-generated short videos.

"The integration of generative AI with content creation is becoming a key driver of growth, unlocking new creative capacity and reshaping online content consumption," said Zhou Jie, deputy secretary-general of the association.