China ended May with a total of 899.3 million subscribers in the 5G segment
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted data from the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT) as saying that shipments to 5G mobile phones in China rose 6% year on year to about 17.74 million units in May.
According to CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the amount of shipped 5G devices represented 85.3% of China’s total mobile phone shipments this month.
In the first five months of 2022, China’s mobile phone shipments stood at 108 million units, down 27.1% year on year, of which 79.7% were 5G mobile phones.
China, meanwhile, shipped 106 million smartphones during the January-May period, accounting for 98.2% of total mobile phone shipments during the period.
Official data also show that Chinese phone makers contributed 83.8% of total domestic mobile phone shipments during the January-May period.
According to a report by The Mobile Economy China, published by GSMA earlier this year, 5G connections in the country will represent 52% of total mobile lines in 2025, up from 29% in 2021.
The report further states that mainland China represents the single largest 5G market in the world, with more than three-quarters of the world’s total 5G connections by the end of 2021.
According to the latest available carrier figures, China ended May with a total of 899.3 million subscribers in the 5G segment. Chinese operators recorded a net profit of 30.18 million 5G subscribers in May.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added a total of 18.21 million 5G subscribers last month. The operator said it ended May with 495.13 million 5G subscribers, compared to 221.95 million 5G subscribers in May 2021.
China Mobile added a total of 108.32 million subscribers to the 5G segment in the first five months of the year.
Rival operator China Unicom said it added a total of 4.93 million 5G subscribers in May. The carrier ended the month with 179.70 million 5G subscribers.
Meanwhile, China Telecom added 7.04 million 5G subscribers last month to take its total number of 5G subscribers to 224.47 million. In the first five months of the year, Telco added a total of 36.67 million 5G subscribers.
Chinese telcos have already set up about 1.6 million 5G base stations nationwide. Local operators aim to build 600,000 new 5G base stations this year, of which 134,000 have already been built in the first quarter. According to an earlier report, China expects to complete this year with about 2 million 5G base stations.
Chinese carriers reportedly deployed a total of 654,000 base stations nationwide last year.
China Broadnet has recently launched commercial 5G services in the domestic market. The operator already provides only services and became the fourth operator in the country to be officially launched in 2020, having previously obtained a license for commercial 5G services in 2019. Prior to the rebranding earlier this year, the carrier was initially known as China Broadcasting Network.
China Broadnet will use the 5G infrastructure owned by China Mobile, China’s largest mobile operator.
