The Chinese online grocery seller Yihaodian said on Monday that it has opened 1,000 "virtual supermarkets", offering the first 3D virtual shopping service on the Chinese mainland.

Customers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will be able to go to a 3D Yihaodian virtual store, look at goods on virtual shelves and buy things using a special application on their cell phones. The goods will then be paid for online and delivered immediately.

"It combines traditional retailing with e-commerce," said Yu Gang, board chairman of Yihaodian. "So customers can enjoy virtual window shopping in a nearby neighborhood as well as the convenience of online purchasing."

The Yihaodian mobile application for the virtual stores is now available in Chinese for Apple Inc's iOS and Google Inc's Android operating systems.

The value of Yihaodian's sales rose to 2.7 billion yuan ($429 million) in 2011, up from 805 million yuan in 2010.