A man looks at a mobile phone at a store in Yichang, Hubei Province in this April 15, 2006 file photo. China has more than 600 million mobile phone users by June this year, which means every one in five mobile phone users is Chinese, a senior official said on September 16, 2007.  [newsphoto]

China has more than 600 million mobile phone users by June this year, which means every one in five mobile phone users is Chinese, a senior official said on Sunday.

The number included 80 million personal handy phone (PHS) users, said Xie Feibo, vice director of the Radio Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) at a forum on Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises held in Guangzhou of South China's Guangdong Province.

Official figures showed that the nation's cell phone users increased by 40.56 million from the end of last year, 6.76 million a month on average.

Meanwhile, fixed-phone users had only grown by 4.86 million to 372 million.

In 1987, when China introduced its first mobile telecommunications equipment, there were little more than 700 users. In 2001, its cell phone users passed the 100-million mark, the largest in the world, and the figure turned to 300 million in May 2004, 400 million in January 2006.

The trend shows no sign of stopping as China still has a vast rural market to tap and city dwellers' appetite for more vogue, media-rich and web-accessible handsets continues to boom.