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Chinese People and their Mobile Phones: over 555 million mobile phone users

The number of new mobile subscribers hit a record high of 8.48 million in January, taking Chinese total mobile users to exceed 555 million, accounting for 41.6% of the country’s population (user density), sending over 54 billion short messages, averaging 3.17 per phone number a day. The continuous falling of handset prices and user charges has directly led to a sharp increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers, Wang Lijian, a spokesman with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) told Xinhua on recently…

The number of new mobile subscribers hit a record high of 8.48 million in January, taking Chinese total mobile users to exceed 555 million, accounting for 41.6% of the country’s population (user density), sending over 54 billion short messages, averaging 3.17 per phone number a day.

The continuous falling of handset prices and user charges has directly led to a sharp increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers, Wang Lijian, a spokesman with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) told Xinhua on recently.

Mobile phones are becoming must-have items for every Chinese person, Wang said.

Meanwhile, the number of fixed-line subscribers shrank nearly 1.5 million to less than 364 million, the sixth month of decline in a row, according to the latest figures from the ministry.

The ministry forecast last month that China’s phone subscribers total, mobile and fixed line combined, are expected to hit 976 million in 2008, with mobile phone subscribers accounting for 46.4percent of the population.

By the end of 2007, China had 365 million fixed-line subscribers and 547 million mobile subscribers, the two figures combined accounted for a fifth of the world’s total phone subscribers, according to the MII.

By Itamar Medeiros

Originally from Brazil, Itamar Medeiros currently lives in Germany, where he works as VP of Design Strategy at SAP, where he leads the design vision for the entire Human Capital Management product line, ensuring cohesive product narratives and establishing best practices.

Working in the Information Technology industry since 1998, Itamar has helped truly global companies in multiple continents create great user experience through advocating Design and Innovation principles. Itamar has also served as a juror for prestigious design competitions and lectured on design topics at universities worldwide.

During his 7 years in China, he promoted the User Experience Design discipline as User Experience Manager at Autodesk and Local Coordinator of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) in Shanghai.

Itamar holds a MA in Design Practice from Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK), for which he received a Distinction Award for his thesis Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments.

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