China's mobile telecom market sees rapid growth

China's mobile telecomm market witnessed rapid growth last year, as the country has begun to lead global technological advancements in this field, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Friday.

The number of China's mobile phone users had jumped to 1.1 billion by the end of 2012 from 976 million at the beginning of the year, Zhao Yuhai, an official with the ministry in charge of boosting cutting-edge technologies, said at a news conference in Beijing.

Also, 3G subscribers saw a dramatic expansion, with more than 107 million new users emerging in 2012, bringing the total number to 234 million users by the end of last year, he said.

The number of people who regularly access the Internet via mobile devices was 420 million at the end of 2012, 64 million more than in 2011. Chinese people spent more than 60 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) on shopping through the Internet last year, five times more than in 2011.

Market expansion was accompanied by technological leaps, Zhao said, noting that 64 experimental networks of TD-LTE - the Chinese 4G mobile telecom standard - have been set up by 29 service providers around the world and 14 commercial networks have been put into use by 13 of the providers. That means that China has become a world-class leader in the mobile telecom sector, he added.