Press Release

CHINA SMS REVENUES FORECAST TO TREBLE AS MOBILE SUBSCRIBER BASE OVERTAKES THE US

Lancaster, July 22nd 2002 - According to the latest forecasts from Teleconomy's figureSeeq ™ service, China will experience significant sustained growth in SMS that will treble revenues to as much as US$1.2 billion by 2006 (increasing from the current US$360 million).

The forecasts produced by figureSeeq - the leading index of the digital economy - have already seen the number of mobile phone users in China hit 176 million by June of this year; this represents an increase of 31.35 million subscribers in the first half of 2002. According to the service, this figure represents a mobile phone penetration rate of 13.71%. China now leads as the world as No.1 mobile phone market, with the US in second place with 139 million subscribers. China Mobile is the country's largest wireless carrier with over 100 million users.

"We have to become accustomed to mega statistics when dealing with China" commented Dr Qmars Safikhani, managing consultant at Teleconomy, "and this unprecedented position is the result of a massive liberalisation and investment in the telecommunications sector".

China's fixed line base is around 199.8 million lines and the largest in the world in terms of absolute number.

Nevertheless, Teleconomy also highlights the increasingly stark gap between the less developed western side of the country and the eastern seaboard where more sophisticated services in the mobile market such as multimedia-messaging service (MMS), is currently reserved to just a number of provincial carriers.
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which collectively share almost 30% of the country's entire Internet user base, will provide the focus for new services such as Interactive graphic-rich games on their mobile handsets.

In terms of IT investment, spending has grown in China and growth will continue making China the third largest market globally for IT products and services by 2006.

Teleconomy monitors the evolution path of the New Economy in China in a new country report service. FigureSeeq ™ database is produced quarterly, covers over 70 countries and assimilates data from over 400 sources globally.

For further information please contact enquiry@teleconomy.com

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Teleconomy seek to understand and comment on organisational and consumer behaviours. Central to our approach is the understanding of evolving behaviours to inform future-oriented forecasting. Teleconomy employ a multi-disciplinary approach to our research, interpretations and consultancy. This approach combines insights and theory from academic fields including sociology, anthropology, psychology, management science, business research, literary theory and philosophy with empirical data collection/studies and practical understandings of the commercial issues and challenges facing organisations.