It's official: China has 400 million mobile subscribers
China adds 106 million new subscriptions over the past year
Follow @infoworldThe number of Chinese mobile subscriptions reached 404 million at the end of February, according to statistics released Wednesday by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
The numbers confirm an MII announcement last month that the number of Chinese mobile subscriptions had topped 400 million. At that time, the ministry said the exact number of mobile phone subscriptions was not available.
However, the figures released by MII do not mean that 400 million people in China have mobile phones, said Ted Dean, managing director of telecommunications consultancy BDA China. "This basically counts the number of SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards out there," he said.
Many Chinese mobile subscribers have more than one SIM card, Dean said. Even so, China is the largest mobile market in the world and the latest figures extend its lead over other countries, such as the U.S. and Japan, he said.
The February numbers represent an increase of 5.3 million new mobile subscriptions over January, and an increase of 106 million new subscriptions over the past year, according to MII.
