People on the Chinese mainland sent approximately 2 billion text messages to convey festival greetings to friends, relatives and family members at this year's Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on October 6.

The statistics was made by the Ministry of Information Industry.

The Ministry's newest statistics show that from January to August this year, mobile phone users on the mainland sent 273.67 billion text messages, up 43.6 percent from the same period last year.

By the end of August, Chinese mainland has had more than 437 million mobile phone users. It means every 100 Chinese mainlanders own 32.7 mobile phones.

(Xinhua News Agecny October 8, 2006)