China to have 900 mn mobile phone users this year

BEIJING, CHINA: China will soon become the first country to have over 900 million mobile phone subscribers, a media report said Wednesday.

People's Daily cited government statistics to say that by the end of March, the country's mobile phone users had reached 889 million.

China has a population of over 1.3 billion.

The total number of mobile phone users will surpass 900 million in May, or no later than June, said market analysts.

China's 3G networks were launched in 2009 and it added 13.5 million new subscribers over the first three months of 2011, the media report said.

The China Internet Network Information Centre said that at the end of last year, the country had 303 million users who used mobile phones to go online.