Chinese sent 218 bn SMS in '04!

According to statistics released by the ministry of information industry, China's information industry brought in more than 21.7 billion yuan last year, as sending one SMS costs 0.1 yuan in the country.

An MII official attributed the huge increase to a variety of new value-added message services, such as WAP and JAVA.

With the advent of 3G, more value-added message services will emerge in the country and help create more profits for mobile phone operators, it said.

The MII also said China had 114.567 million new phone subscribers in 2004 out of which 64.871 million were mobile phone subscribers and 49.696 million fixed phone subscribers.

China, at present, has 647.267 million phone users.