The world’s largest mobile services operator, China Mobile, had an overwhelming 87% market share of China‘s 8.6 million new cellphone subscribers in June, which brought the company’s total subscriber base to 414.59 million at the end of June. (NB. Total June mobile subscribers for China & India – updated 28/7 here)

India, the fastest growing mobile market in the region, saw its GSM mobile user uptake increase slightly from May to hit 6.3 million (GSM figures unavailable from mainly CDMA-operating Reliance Communications) in June. Bharti Airtel consolidated its position as India’s leading operator with a record 2.56 million subscribers for the month, which is the highest ever monthly customer addition by any operator in the country.

In June, China Mobile contributed 7.55 million new cellphone subscribers for the China market to continue its domination of the country’s total mobile user base at 70.8%. For the first half of 2008, the company’s net addition of 45.25 million subscribers accounted for a monthly average of 7.54 million people.

In contrast, China Unicom added only 1.09 million new subscribers to reach 170.8m total users. For the first 6 months of the year, Unicom acquired 7.035m new GSM subscribers and around 1.242m new CDMA users. The company had a total of 127.6m GSM subscribers, including 65.7m pay-after-call users and 61.9m pay-before-call users.

For India, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, BSNL and Vodafone Essar are the four GSM players operating in the state and three CDMA players include Reliance, Tata Teleservices and HFCL Connect.

Bharti Airtel secures top ranking with 32.7% GSM market share and total user base swelled to 69.38 million. Reliance Communications narrowly squeezed past Vodafone-Essar to India’s number 2 slot, by adding 1.74 million mobile users in June, becoming the 5th mobile operator in Asia to have a total of more than 50 million subscribers.

Vodafone-Essar, the third largest wireless operator, gained 1.73 million new subscribers for the month and maintained its market share of 23.19%. The company had a total of 49.2 million customers in India.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) however saw its total market share dip to 17.61% from 18.01% in May 2008. BSNL added 365,479 users in June, taking its total to 37.36m users. Idea Cellular, with 12.82% market share, added 1.05 million new users and overall subscribers totalled 27.2 million.