China now has 1.29 billion mobile users

More than 90% of the people in China have a mobile phone which means that, with a population of just under 1.4 billion, the number of mobile users in China is somewhere around 1.29 billion. That shows just how quickly mobile use is growing in the nation, but the most impressive growth is with mobile broadband. Despite all of these mobile users, a significant chunk of them don’t have access to 3G or 4G, but that’s changing at a rapid pace. 

Everybody in China has a mobile phone these days: that’s an exaggeration, but not as much of one as you might think. According to the latest numbers from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China has reached 1.29 billion total mobile users. Given that the Middle Kingdom has an estimated population of under 1.4 billion, that means that well over 90 percent of the population has joined the mobile revolution. Not all of those are smartphone users or users of the mobile web, of course, but those figures are growing fast too. In fact, China has picked up more than 200 million mobile broadband (3G and 4G) subscribers over the past year. Mobile broadband subscribers now make up nearly half of China’s total mobile phone market. 4G is growing especially fast: 20 million new customers signed up for 4G over the first two months of 2015, and 4G subscribers now make up more than 10 percent of China’s mobile market for the first time ever.