Shanghai, Jan 23 (IANS) Sale of mobile phones in China showed a growth of 57 percent in 2010 due to the popularity of internet and television enabled devices, according to a survey.
More than 246 million mobile phone units were sold on the Chinese mainland last year, Beijing-based research firm Analysys International said.
The domestic market will continue to expand in 2011 because of a greater variety of smartphones and cheaper 3G services, according to Shanghai Daily.
iPhones and devices that use the Google-developed Android system are becoming popular among the Chinese due to a large number of mobile applications, Analysys said.
In 2009, 157 million mobile phones were sold and this helped China become the biggest cell phone market worldwide.
At the end of last year, there were more than 800 million mobile phone users in China. Around 40 million of them subscribed to 3G services.
Telecom operator China Mobile had 584 million users, including 20.7 million 3G users. There were 14.06 million 3G users for China Unicom. China Telecom had 12.29 million 3G users.
