The three major Chinese telecom operators, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, have all published their latest operating statistics, with China Mobile and China Telecom providing their financial reports for the first quarter of 2009 and China Unicom revealing its performance for March 2009.

China Mobile said its net profit increased by 5.2% to CNY25.2 billion in the first quarter of 2009 and the number of its mobile phone users increased by 19.91 million during the same period. By the end of March 2009, its total number of users had reached 477.16 million. However, China Mobile also felt great pressure, because the company's average revenue per user, an important index to measure the value of users, decreased by CNY10 to CNY73 compared with the fourth quarter of 2008.

China Telecom had a good beginning in the first quarter of 2009, because its painstakingly-built new product eSurfing had gained a good overall performance. In the first three months of 2009, the number of China Telecom's mobile phone users achieved a net increase of 4.93 million, completely converting the embarrassing situation caused by the loss of CDMA users in the fourth quarter of 2008. Apart from the incomes from the initial installation fee, China Telecom made net profit of CNY4.699 billion, decreasing 27.4% compared with the same period of last year. Though its net profit was not at the same level with that of China Mobile, the good performance of its mobile phone business is good news for the company. In March alone, the number of its new mobile phone users reached 2.21 million, a rapid growth compared with the 1.02 million increase in January and the 1.7 million increase in February. So far, the total number of China Telecom's mobile phone users reached 32.84 million.

In addition, China Telecom opened its 3G businesses in over 120 Chinese cities nationwide last week, making it the first Chinese telecom operator that launched the 3G businesses in such a large scale. China Telecom aims to expand its 3G coverage to over 300 cities in three months and its final goal for 2009 is to develop 50 million CDMA mobile phone users.

China Unicom's operating statistics for March 2009 show that the number of its GSM mobile phone users increased 1.849 million during the month, a net increase of 1.64 million compared with February 2009, and the accumulated number of its users reached about 138 million. The concern is the fixed line telephone business of China Unicom stopped declining and the number of its telephone users achieved a net increase of 223,000 in March.