Some 110,000 conversations per hour were made through the China Mobile network during the Opening ceremony at the “Bird’s Nest”. The number of mobile subscribers who used their cellphones in or around the National Stadium during that time was 250,000, nearly double the number of users during the 2004 Athens Olympic opening. 226,000 subscribers watched the opening via cellphones.

Status of China’s Telecom Market For First Half of 2008

The rapid development of mobile communications is the major impetus of steady growth in China’s telecoms market to date in 2008, with income going up 15.9% year-on-year and a market share of 53.6%.

Business volume of the national telecom service totaled 1.095 trillion yuan (US$160.2 billion dollars) in the first half, up 25.9% year on year; business revenue hit 398.8 billion yuan, up 9.2% compared with a year earlier.

State-run corporations: China Telecom and China Netcom are in the fixed-line business while China Mobile and China Unicom are in the mobile sector.

Fixed-line subscribers: 356 million as of June.

Mobile users: 601 million as of June.

People sent 592.1 billion text messages through 2007, 1.6 billion on average per day. Spam messages reached 353.8 billion, up 92.7% from a year earlier.

Nokia held 32.5% market share in the first half, the biggest among mobile brands. Motorola and Samsung ranked second and third respectively. Domestic brand Lenovo took the fourth position, accounting for 3.8% market share.

The number of Chinese netizens reached 253 million through June, up 56.2% from 162 million in 2007, the most in the world. Through last year, broadband users hit 122 million, ranking first in the world.

The registered “CN” domain topped 12.18 million as of July 22.

In the first half, computer virus and Trojan registered more than 1.24 million, surging 338 percent over last year.

Source: China Daily, Xinhuanet