As China continues its relentless march towards total connection and the inevitable borg assimilation that will follow, it’s good to check in every now and then to see where things are. Thanks to some new stats from the our friends at MIIT, we’ve got the latest word on where China is now.
MIIT reports that as of the end of August, there were 1.07 billion mobile phone users in China, and 192 million of them (about 18 percent) are 3G users. But, as we’ve heard from lots of sources, those numbers are growing fast. MIIT says that in total, China has gained more than 64 million 3G subscribers so far this year.
Needless to say that growth has been good to everybody’s bottom lines; MIIT says that the industry has taken in more than 706 billion RMB ($112 billion) in revenue, which is up 9 percent compared to the first eight months of last year. Amazingly, although mobile phones make up for more than 70 percent of telecom revenue at this point, MIIT says that revenue from fixed line telephones grew a little bit even as those services lost a little ground in terms of their percentage of overall telecom revenue.
The lesson here: phones in China simply cannot be stopped. Apparently even fixed-line phones. (Oh, and if you don’t get the image here, you need to watch this).
[Telecom World via Sina Tech]
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