Mobile phone users hit over 600 mln

Mobile phone users hit 574 mln byChina are rising at what is clearly an astonishing rate. According to figures from the Ministry of Industry and Information, there were 957 million phone users by the end of the first half of 2008, up 44 million year on year.

The Chinese bride pictured above is just one of more than  600 million mobile phone users in the "world's fastest growing economy.(File photo)

While 601 million of these were mobile phone subscribers, up 53 million from the same period last year. Meanwhile, subscribers for broadband Internet services also went up by 9.6 million during the first 6 months, pushing up the total number of Internet subscribers in China to 76 million.