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Handset Bites off a Big Chunk at China's Telecom Market
By the end of last July, China has surpassed the United States in so far as the number of the cellular-phone users is concerned, looming as the biggest mobile telecom market of the world, according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
MII told that China has by far brought mobile telecom access to 120.6 million users as against 120.1 million in the United States.
The subscribers of China Mobile and China Unicom have respectively doubled that of the same period last year. Mobile Users of Guangdong Mobile have dwarfed that of the fixed-line while handset users in Jiangsu, Sichuan, Beijing and Shanghai are also approaching those of the fixed phones.
The flexibility and convenience have made more people prone to the use of handsets in their daily life and work, especially those known as high-end users with relatively sound economic conditions and bigger traffic volume. As a result, the traffic volume of fixed phones has been widely split.
As for the whole country, the future of fixed-line telephone is by no means promising. The phone-number released in the first half of this year set a new record high averaging a daily release of over 100 thousand, or 20 million all together.
However, the revenue of China Telecom, who majors in fixed phone business, has seen a rise of only 5.8 percent, 13 percent lower than the same period of last year.
China Telecom has ascribed the revenue decrease to the price-cuts for local calls in rural areas and long-distance services beginning from last March and strong impact imposed by mobile telephones.
Chang Xiaobing, vice general manager of China Telecom, holds that the substitution brought about by technological advance is irreversible and the fixed phone fights a bit shy of the personalized handset.
ĦĦĦĦIn fact, mobile telecom is the fastest booming sector among the whole telecommunication industry and mobile users will surpass fixed phone users in the coming five years all round the world.
At present, the market share of China Telecom is sharply shrinking with its revenue growth rate down to 5.8 percent in the first half of this year while China Mobile saw a growth of 20 percent and China Unicom 58 percent.
Five months after the charge adjustment, the market share of China Telecom has seen a downturn to less than 53 percent by now and will see a further decline to less than 50 percent by the end of this year
By PD Online staff member Li Heng
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