China Mobile leads Vodafone by 80 million after Essar deal

^{China adds 6 million mobile users in January} China Mobile leads Vodafone by 80 million after Essar deal

28 Feb 2007 at 04:15 GMT Timo Poropudas

China Mobile added a further 4.86 million customers in January to take its total to 306 million. It has more than 80 million more customers that the second largest mobile operator Vodafone, even counting in the Hutch Essar customers.

China Mobile continues to increase its market share at Unicom’s expense, as it has done in each month over the last two years.

Unicom has added to its overall customer base throughout its entire history and has consistently added more than one million every month for about as long as anyone can remember, reports The Mobile World Briefing.

Unicom added a total of 1.38 million in January, the most of them, 1.009 million, were GSM customers, the rest 0.367 million, smaller CDMA network users.

January 2007 net additions were an all-time record for the Chinese market. It was also the second month in a row that monthly net additions have exceeded 6 million.