Although 4G is on the horizon — China Mobile has just begun 4G testing in Chengdu — China’s 3G market continues to grow with remarkable speed. According to a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announcement yesterday, the country passed its latest 3G milestone sometime in September, when the number of 3G users climbed above 200 million. To put that in perspective: China has more 3G users than there are people in the UK, France, and Italy combined.
If you’re wondering just how big a jump that is, China broken the 100 million subscriber barrier in September of 2011, meaning that China has picked up 100 million new 3G subscribers in the past year. 3G networks first became commericially available in 2009, so the second hundred million users came much more quickly than the first.
And with no signs that 4G will be allowed into the commercial market soon — China’s regulators seem to want to let the 3G market develop further before allowing it to be cannibalized by 4G — 3G user growth is unlikely to slow any time soon. And given that China has more than a billion mobile users, there’s still a ton of room left for growth.
[China News Service via Sina Tech, Image via Shutterstock]
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