By the end of September 2011, there were 150 million registered users of mobile phone application stores in China, an increase of almost 50% compared with the previous quarter, according to latest statistics published by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The statistics showed that by the end of the third quarter of 2011, the total number of Chinese phone users had reached 1.24 billion, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 2.5%. The nation's 3G network had covered all cities above county level with over 100 million users, including over 40 million TD-SCDMA users.

The number of Internet broadband users had reached 150 million, an increase of 7.1% compared with the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the nationwide telecommunication and Internet networks run with an incredibly high network access rate of over 97%.

The report also mentioned that the Chinese telecom industry has actively engaged in rescue and relief actions, including organizing 80 emergency communication support teams and sending out 57,000 repair staff over the first nine months of 2011.

In addition, during the third quarter of 2011, China opened telephone services in 5,121 additional rural villages and started providing broadband services in 7,299 administrative villages. With these moves, the percentage of villages with phone services in China reached 94.4%, and the amount of administrative villages with broadband services reached 81.3%.

At the same time, the development of new businesses and the popularization of new applications continued. Basic telecom enterprises enhanced the construction of bases for new businesses, and new mobile value-added services maintained fast growth. The number of mobile reading users increased to over 90 million, a quarter-over-quarter increase of over 50%; and the number of registered users of mobile phone application stores also saw a nearly 50% quarter-over-quarter increase to 150 million.