Chinese mobile phone users sent 217.76 billion short messages in 2004, up 58.8 percent from the previous year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Information Industry on Thursday.

China's information industry brought in more than 21.7 billion yuan in 2004, as sending one short message costs 0.1 yuan in China.

An MII official attributed the huge increase to a variety of new value-added message services, such as WAP and JAVA. He predicted that with the coming of 3G, more value-added message services will emerge in the country and help create more profits.

The MII also said China had 114.567 million new phone subscribers in 2004, 64.871 million of them were mobile phone subscribers and 49.696 million were fixed phone subscribers. China has 647.267 million phone users now.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2005)