China’s three largest wireless operators continued to show broad growth in October, posting a combined 12 million net customer additions during the month.
The bulk of the country’s growth continued to come from China Unicom (CHL), which in addition to being the country’s largest operator is also the largest in the world. The carrier, which uses the TD-SCDMA standard for its network, added more than 5.3 million new customers in October and ended the month with nearly 639 million subscribers.
The country’s No. 2 operator, China Unicom (CHU), said it added just over 3.3 million new subscribers in October, spread across more than 2.9 million 3G customers and 421,000 2G customers. China Unicom ended the month with more than 192 million customers on its network. China Unicom is also the country’s only operator that legally sells Apple’s iPhone device, though reports indicate that the other operators host millions of hacked devices on their networks.
China Telecom (CHA) said it also added just over 3.3 million new customers in October to its CDMA-based network, including nearly 2.8 million to its 3G offering. The carrier ended the month with 120.3 million total subscribers. China Telecom has also expanded its reach into the U.S. market, recently opening an Internet data center in Los Angeles, with plans for a “full-service” office in Chicago through its China Telecom Americas subsidiary.
Overall, the country counted nearly 952 million wireless customers at the end of October. While the customer base is vast, it should be noted that average revenue per user across China is significantly lower than most developed countries at less than $10 per month.
Those low ARPU results could begin to turn for China, as a new report from Strategy Analytics found the Chinese market surpassed the United States during the third quarter as the largest in the world for smartphones. According to the report, 23.9 million smartphones were shipped in China compared with 23.3 million in the United States. The results were a 58% sequential increase in China, compared with a 7% sequential drop for the U.S. market.
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