China's mobile phone users exceeded 515 million by the end of August this year, with a monthly rise of 6.8 million on average, according to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

Chinese cell phone users had sent a total of 378.5 billion short text messages by the end of August, up 38.3 percent year on year.

Since last year, China's rural areas have seen a continued demand for cell phones, which also boosted the handset output, the MII said.

According to the ministry, China produced 347.6 million mobile phones between January and August, up 28 percent over the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the number of fixed-line subscribers remained almost the same as last month's 372 million and the number of newly-added fixed-line users averaged only 579,000 per month, barely one tenth of that of mobile users.

The ministry also said that the revenue of the country's post and telecommunications services reached 475.29 billion yuan (US$62.5 billion) in the first eight months this year.

(Xinhua News Agency October 4, 2007)