China market: Mobile phone user base over 641 million in December 2008

There were 641.23 million subscribers of mobile communication services in China as of the end of December 2008, growing by 1.17% on month and by 17.17% on year, according to statistics published by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The number of subscribers at the end of December accounted for 48.5% of the country's population (user density).

At the end of December 2008 there were 340.8 million subscribers of fixed telecommunication networks in China, translating into a user density of 25.8%.

In December 2008, mobile phone subscribers in China sent 61.69 billion short messages, averaging 3.12 short messages per phone number a day.