China's 426 million mobile phone users sent more than 200 billion short messages in the first half of the year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

 

There were 5.49 million new mobile phone subscribers every month and the number of text messages sent from mobile phones grew by 45.8 percent, said MII on Thursday.

 

The number of land lines grew 2.47 million a month to reach 365 million at the end of June.

 

China has become the world's largest mobile communications market. There are 28 land line phones for every 100 people and the figure for mobile phones is 32.7 per hundred.

 

MII statistics also show that China's telecommunications sector reported an income of 345.57 billion yuan (US$43.1 billion) in the first half of the year with a year-on-year rise of 10.7 percent.

 

China's telecom sector invested 84.87 billion yuan (US$10.6 billion) in fixed assets in the first half of this year, up 9.1 percent over a year ago, according to MII.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2006)