154 million mobile customers worldwide have ported their numbers

The Telecommunications Management Group, a US-based telecomms consultancy, says 154 million mobile phone customers in 48 countries worldwide have kept their mobile telephone number when changing networks. Their new report about mobile number portability (MNP) points out that China and India have yet to introduce MNP - and says that statistically every mobile phone customer in Hong Kong has ported their mobile number at least once. [Press release via PRNewsWire]

ZTE aims to be top 5 mobile manufacturer in 2010

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reports that Chinese mobile manufacturer ZTE aims to become one of the world's top five mobile phone producers within the next three years. The company, which is currently the world's 6th largest mobile producer, says it'll increase handset production by 60% next year to reach 80 million units - and wants to produce 100 million units per year by 2010. [Source: SCMP.com]

Over 600 million mobile phones in China

There are now 601 million mobile phone users in China, according to government figures from the end of June 2008. The number of mobile users increased by 53.5 million from January to June, while the number of fixed-line customers fell by 9.3 million to 356 million in the same period. [Source: Forbes.com]

Over 1.7 billion mobile web users by 2013

Juniper Research says the number of mobile web users worldwide - currently estimated at 577 million - will exceed 1.7 billion by 2013 as a result of more collaborative "web 2.0" applications and improved coverage. The largest mobile web market will be in the Far East and China region, where users will increase from 190 million currently to almost 416 million by 2013. [Press release]

Restructuring for China's telecoms industry

The Chinese government has said it's going to restructure its telecoms industry. Current rules prevent fixed-line operators from offering mobile services and vice versa. There'll be a number of mergers and swaps, resulting in more competition for state-owned China Mobile, which currently has over two-thirds of the country's mobile phone customers. The government has also said it'll start issuing 3G licences. There are currently around 600 million mobile phone users in China. [Sources: ChinaTechNews.com; BBC News; Chinese government announcement]

Chinese mobile production slows

Mobile phone production in China has slowed, according to to figures from the country's Ministry of Industry and Information. Handset production in the first three months of 2008 reached 141.29 million units, which was a rise of 6.7% over the same period in 2007. However, it's substantially less than the 27.8% rise between Q1 2006 and Q1 2007. The main reason for the drop is believed to be production volumes at Motorola's plants in northern and eastern China. [Source: Cellular-News.com]

World's largest mobile phone

A Chinese man says he has just built the world's largest working mobile phone. It's 92cm high and weighs 22kg - and is a copy of the owner's Nokia 6670. The creator, Mr Tan of Songyuan, says the giant phone has all the functions of the original except for the vibrating alert. He worked on the phone for six months. [Source: Cellular-News.com; 17tech.com]

China Mobile profits up by 31.9%

China Mobile has just released its annual results for 2007:

• Turnover reached £25 billion, up 20.9%
• Profit of over £6 billion, up 31.9%
• Total subscribers exceeded 360 million, up 22.6%

[Source: Forbes.com]

Specify your own mobile phone

The curiously-named zzzPhone.com has just launched, offering individually-built customised mobile phones that are created by an American company with assembly plants in China. They claim to provide unlocked, tri-band phones at factory-direct low prices yet with more features than the Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone. Apparently the three 'z's in zzzPhone represent the Chinese characters for 'personal', 'exclusive', and 'expert': ZiJi de, Zhuan You de and Zhuan jia de.

More SMS records forecast for New Year's Eve

Airwide Solutions, the company that worked with Vodafone to send the world's first text message, has forecast the number of SMS messages expected on 31st December 2007 and 1st January 2008. It expects the USA to send almost 730 million messages and the UK to send 280 million messages. However, China - which doesn't celebrate its New Year until February - will send more messages than both countries. An average day in China sees 1.6 billion texts sent. [Source: Cellular-News.com]

China makes over 40% of the world’s mobiles

A report in PC World magazine – quoting China’s official press agency – says China’s 38 mobile phone manufacturers have produced around 500 million mobile phones this year, which is over 40% of the total number of handsets manufactured worldwide. Around 80% of the phones were exported.