[photopress:it_mobilephone_user.jpg,full,alignright]Some facts on which to ponder:
China’s software sector generated RMB580 billion ($80.8 billion) in revenue in 2007, an annual increase of 20.8%.
Sales of software products surged 22.5% to RMB201.7 billion.
China’s phone subscribers, mobile and fixed line combined, are expected to grow by more than 60 million in 2008 to hit a total of 976 million, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.
China’s fixed-line and mobile phone subscribers will account for 27.1 percent and 46.4% of the population, respectively. The continuous falling of mobile communication charges has directly led to a sharp increase in mobile phone subscribers and some people even replaced their fixed-lines with mobile phones.
In 2007, China’s mobile phone subscribers increased by 86.22 million, while fixed-line subscribers fell by 2.33 million.
By the end of 2007, China had 370 million fixed-line subscribers and 530 million mobile subscribers. The two figures combined accounted for a fifth of the world’s total phone subscribers.
Some 99.5 percent of the country’s villages have access to telephone links, and the broadband connection reached 92% of the villages nationwide.
The number of Internet users in China passed 200 million in 2007, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use.
China’s Internet population stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53% from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million. That figure puts China just 5 million users away from becoming the world’s largest wired nation — and with only about 16% of the population online. At its current growth rate, China will become the world’s top Internet market sometime in the next few months.
China’s most popular Internet application is online music, used by 86.6% of those surveyed, followed by instant messaging with 81%. E-mail placed only fifth, with 56.5%.
China’s information industry authority plans to expand broadband service to more than 95% of the nation’s villages in 2008.
David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy, said, ‘China’s admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC.’ Most of them are using Internet cafes.
Source: PC World and Beijing 2008 and China.com