China's mobile phone users top 850 mln in 2010

   HONG KONG -- The number of mobile phone subscribers in China exceeded 850 million last year as more Chinese people began to consider mobile phones everyday necessities, a government report showed Monday.

   The net addition of Chinese mobile users reached a record high of more than 100 million in 2010 alone, according to the report from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The number is equivalent to 60 percent of the country's estimated population of 1.4 billion for 2010.

   During the January-November period in 2010, 103 million users were newly subscribed to the country's mobile phone services. The figure is estimated to have surpassed 110 million as of the end of December.

   The report showed the number of fixed-line subscribers dropped

153.9 million to 298 million during the period.

   In the first 11 months of last year, the Chinese telecom industry's revenue was estimated to be 819.03 billion yuan

($123.56 billion), up 6.6 percent on-year.

   Sales from mobile telecom business made up 70 percent of the industry's total business revenue, while fixed-line business accounted for about 30 percent. (Yonhap News)