The People’s daily reports “Xi Guohua, the Vice Minister of the Information Industry said at the 2007 International Conference on Wireless Communications Application that the future of long-distance verbal communication in China would be mobile,with most people using mobile phones rather than fixed-lines in the future.Xi Guohua said that in 2006,China’s information industry had an added-value of 1.56 trillion yuan,7.4 percent of GDP.China has the world’s largest number of telephone users, the second largest number of internet users and the biggest electronic information industry in the world.Mobile communication is growing the fastest. In 2006, the number of new mobile phone users was 67.68 million.The number has grown by more than 60 million each year for several years now, bringing the total number of users to 480 million.The mobile communication sector is claiming an increasing proportion of the communication industry, and the distribution of both the mobile and fixed-line network is expanding.In 2006, the income of the mobile communication sector comprised 47.3 percent of the communication industry’s income.In the first quarter of this year,that proportion has expanded to more than 48 percent”.

480 million mobile phone users in China