China has 547.286 million mobile users and mobile penetration rate of 41.6%, Xinhua reports.
Since the implementation of one-way charging implemented nationwide in the middle of 2007, the substitution of fixed-line services by mobile networks has accelerated, Xinhua noted. While Mobile and Unicom last year added 86.23 million users, or roughly 7.12 million a month, the fixed-line customer base shrank by 2.3 million to 365.45 million, a penetration of 27.8%.
Total telecom industry income in 2007 was 728.01 billion yuan, up 10.9%. Chinese mobile users last year sent SMS 592.1 billion text messages, up 37.8% from 2006.
592 billion text messages–that’s more than all 4 of my daughters added together!
Not long ago, I spent a day with the founder and CEO of NEUSOFT, an extraordinary software company in Shenyang, that has developed software to allow authors to write poems for cell phone users to text to their friends, with a small charge each time the message is forwarded. Cool. They also have a division that writes embedded software for medical devices and another that trains 20,000 young people a year for IT jobs.
Anybody who still thinks of China as bicycles and grey jackets should really go take a look. China’s rapid growth to date has been driven by manufcturing. The new growth strategy downplays manufacturing in favor of big investments in information technology and high-speed communications networks so they can have clean air and water, rising productivity, and jobs.
JR
I am looking for an answer to the idea that consumers become 60% of GDP vs 70%…obviously in the long run it would make the US a healthier place but how much pain does this inflict?
I think we are also in a confidence crisis in terms of the lack of seemed knowledgeable leadership on the economic front. I think we have a bubble burst in homebuilding/mortgage lending after 4-5 years of frothy profits and a healthy retrench is necessary and should have been foreseen by those in the industry. Greed can be blinding, no? History could have served to guide decision making…as a lay-person was able to see the bubble and got my people out with profits in tact.
This stimulus package reminds me of another recent proposal from congress to offset rising oil prices…remember a year or two ago when prices first hit $3.00? They wanted to send each american a $100 check to offset the rising cost of gasoline. Then markets pulled back, the oil cos and refiners shrunk their margins some and the consumer got a market based pay increase with gas back at $2.50 per gallon.
Unless we start having some vision for this economy vs propup ideas that suggest incompetancy, the market will not be able to make headway. Looking at other assets for investment, it is clearly the place to put your money, but tough to commit with the thought of lower prices before higher