Chinese send 15.6 billion short text messages in January
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-03-01 16:56

Chinese sent some 15.6 billion short messages through their mobile phones during January, a rise of 91 percent over the same period last year.

The astounding figure was in part due to the 2003 New Year and the Lunar New Year celebrations as more than 270 million cell phone users tapped out short text holiday wishes, Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

Short messages are popular in China because of their low cost and efficiency, with subscribers paying on average about 0.1 yuan (0.01 US dollar) for each message, according to Xinhua.

China is the biggest mobile phone market in the world with the number of mobile phone users growing by 8.1 million to 276.8 million during the month, the report said.

The country also has about 270 million fixed line customers.

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