Jun. 30 – The number of cell phone subscribers is continuing to grow at a rapid pace across the world’s two most populous countries, with China and India now claiming 796 million and 617.5 million mobile phone users, respectively, through May 2010.
According to China’s Ministry of Information Industry, new Chinese cell phone subscribers totaled 9.4 million for the month of May, bringing the 2010 yearly total to 48.5 million. India, meanwhile, reported stronger growth on the month with 16.3 million new mobile subscriptions.
By jointly surpassing the milestone of 1.4 billion cell phone users, China and India now provide 56 percent of their nearly 2.6 billion citizens with cell phone coverage. Individually, 60 percent of China’s 1.34 billion nationals now maintain a mobile phone subscription compared with 52 percent of India’s 1.18 billion citizens.
China Mobile remains the top telecommunications operator in China with an updated mobile subscriber base of 549 million, followed by China Unicom with 155.3 million and China Telecom with 71.5 million users. In India, the largest two telecommunication companies by subscriber base are Bharti Airtel with 133.6 million and Vodafone with 106.3 million users.
Mobile usage in India usually comes at the cost of land phones… people usually replace their landphone with a mobile…though nowadays, landphone providers like BSNL are providing landphone plans at peanut costs, let us see if their subscriber base increases…
from the wikipedia i understand that PRC has a large subscriber base for the land phones too…
on the other hand, from the above article, i see that China Mobile is havin 549Mil customer of 800Million customers which i feel is really unhealthy to competition and bringing in new companies… India on that matter is in a better position…
sincerely
Sai
Its an amazing market penetration for a combined population of 2.6 billion – over 50% of all people in China and India have access to a mobile phone. With call rates in India amongst the cheapest in the world – communications is forging the way ahead for emerging markets. Watch India start to fly. – Chris
“Watch India start to fly”
A lot of people, especially younger people, using mobiles are just wasting time and money. In fact, had the “mobile” not been invented, they would probably have spent more time “reading”.
Having said that, the “mobile” revolution is definitely good for businesses that knows how to use the “mobile” and Internet optimally.
@Carlos,
the mobile revolution is a critical source of jobs in present day India. technology can take us forward, but it depends on how we use it. Our generation is nothing like the older gen, but still we have to respect them and also the older Gen should understand us and let us be ourselves… our chatting, internet, etc might look odd to the gen old, but it is what we enjoy today, tomorrow, who know we will also be perplexed and irritated by the new inventions our kids use
sincerely
Sai
Sai,
I love playing against those who constantly play blind 
No one has ever stopped you or your generation from doing whatever you want to do. At least not in India (I am an Indian, btw).
Still the fact remains that endless yakking on the phone and pointless SMSing/Twittering, etc, etc is definitely a moronish activity. I have read recently that this sort of activity (along with frenetic multi-tasking) actually lowers ones IQ. Do a google search and check it out, if you wish.
As far as I am concerned, no sweat. Less competition for me
Cheers Sai,
All the very best,
Carlos.