China Mobile, the country's leading telecom operator, witnessed business bustling in the past year, with its users sending over 700 million short messages a day, said a China Mobile official at an annual China telecom symposium Thursday.

 

According to an official with the China Mobile research institute, China Mobile's users kept increasing by 3 million a month in 2005 and reached 223 million by last September.

 

China has the world's largest mobile phone market, with more than 377 million mobile phone subscribers, or an average of 29 mobile phones per 100 people.

 

Revenue from data business accounted for 20 percent of China Mobile's total earnings. Wireless Application protocol (WAP) business expanded by 120 percent over 2004 with revenue quintupling.

 

As China Mobile has more than 2,700 service providers globally, downloading and sending multimedia messages and ringtones also brought profits to the operator. The ringtones business brought about over 400 million yuan (US$50 million) in last October alone.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2006)