China is a country where obtaining statistics is sometimes confusing because of the massive size of the population and the rapid growth of business. By 2025, China will build enough skyscrapers to fill ten New York-sized cities. For now, the statistics are so striking that they are hard to believe.
The latest figures on the prevalence of mobile phones in China are remarkable. TechCrunch has received a report from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) stating that the telecom industry in China grew by 11.4 percent between January and November this year. That is remarkably higher than the 4 percent growth estimated by Infonetics Research.
According to the report, China has 1.4 billion mobile phone users, equal to 82 percent of the total population. For the record, according to the Pew Institute, 83 percent of American citizens owned a mobile phone in 2012. This is striking growth for the Chinese telecom industry. Of course, the MIIT figures cannot be taken at face value, because some Chinese people use more than one SIM for their mobiles, so the real figures are lower than those reported by the MIIT.
The report also states that there are 220 million 3G users in China, equal to 20 percent of all mobile phone users. The number will only rise further, because China has become the biggest smartphone market in the world. Clearly, in a market like this, there is room for every model of mobile phone.
The rapid growth of mobile phones in China suggests that 2013 will be an exciting year. Well-known manufacturers such as Lenovo, Apple and Samsung have launched competitive mobile phones in the Chinese market. In future it will become much clearer which manufacturer is on top of the race.