14 DAY TRIAL // China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator has announced that its customer base has grown up to 301 million, which means that it has now surpassed the total population of the US. Julie Pohlig, senior analyst at Vital Wave Consulting claims that the 300 million person milestone provides perspective on the sheer size of the Chinese market, illustrating the perceived value of information and communications technology to a population that has far less purchasing power.
"The image is striking -- the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the U.S. using a cell phone," says Pohlig. "But it's important to understand that the per capita income of the Chinese subscribers is $1700, not $44,000 as in the United States."
Nevertheless, China's overall population exceeds 1.3 billion and represents about a fifth of the world's population. So it's not all that surprising, in an age when mobile phones have become quite important and widely used by people of all ages, that China Mobile would manage to gather up 300 million people out of 1.3 billion as its subscribers.
Chinese subscribers generally rely on prepaid phone cards and pay up to 80 percent less than would US customers for mobile phone services and spend around 7 percent of their salary or more on their phone. "Many Chinese spend a greater percentage of monthly income on pre-paid phone cards than Americans spend on food. This says a lot about the perceived importance of telecommunications in that society," Pohlig points out.
There are quite a few regions in the world, where most users own at least one mobile phone, be it with a prepaid card or on a contract. So, although at a first impression, this only goes to show that people from China, as well as people from other parts of the world enjoy being able to communicate by using their mobile phones and are starting to treat their handsets as a part of their day-to-day lives.