Nearly 1 Billion Served: Chinese Mobile Subscribers Approaching Major Milestone

According to a report by Reuters, China’s total amount of mobile subscribers is about to surpass – or indeed, may have already surpassed – the one billion mark. After a 1.2 percent gain in February, the total figure for the nation’s mobile subscribers was at 999.7 million.

It was expected that the milestone might be passed in February – in fact, we blogged about it a month ago) – but it looks as though we’ll have to put away our balloons and confetti until the official March figures are released [1].

But seriously folks, if you look at the breakdown of subscribers in the chart above, you can see that China Mobile accounts for the biggest share by far, with 661.4 million subscribers in total. But that’s largely due to its ginormous 2G subscriber base. It’s advantage over China Unicom and China Telecom in the 3G space is nowhere near as comfortable.

[Interactive version of chart]