Cell Phone Users Top 600 Million for Brisk Profit Growth

Despite a slowing economy, China’s telecoms business is growing at a brisk pace. China already has over 600 million cell phone users and an increasing number of Internet users giving up their dial-up connections for broadband.

The MIIT report emphasized that despite the stable development of the telecoms industry, user structure has further differentiated. Statistics show by the end of July, cell phone users broke the 600 million barrier for the first time to 608 million. In the first seven months of this year, the number of cell phone users grew by 61.073 million, that is 8.7 million every month on average, a record high.

In contrast, the number of fixed line users decreased by 10.581 million in the first seven months, 1.35 million per month on average, to 355 million.

Correspondingly, income from mobile and digital communication in the first seven months increased by 16.2% and 40.4%, respectively, over the same period last year, their percentage of total income increasing by 3.27% and 2.10%, year on year. Meanwhile, income from local fixed line business dropped by 6.8% and its percentage of total income fell by 3.73%.

According to China Telecom’s half-year report, between January and July family users of its fixed line network decreased by 5.44 million, to 214.9 million. Family users of China Netcom’s fixed line network fell by 2.31 million to 108.5 million. Of that total, fixed line users dropped by 1.499 million, and personal Handyphone system users fell by 0.811 million.

The rapid increase of Internet users has become a highlight of fixed line network operators. MIIT statistics indicate more and more Internet users now use broadband. In the first half of the year, dial-up users decreased by 3.880 million to 15.530 million, while broadband users grew by 11.413 million to 77.827 million.

Cell phone advantages, such as user convenience and lowered service fees, become more and more apparent, and the issue of new facets such as 3G and cell phone newspapers and television are attracting more and more users every day.