In case there was any question about China Mobile's dominance as the world's largest mobile-phone-service provider, the company announced yesterday that it signed a monthly record of 7 million new subscribers in January.

And the company's mobile-market share on the mainland continues to outpace its only current competition, China Unicom, which added 1.6 million subscribers last month.

China Mobile's dominance may take a hit when the industry is reshuffled later this year - throwing some fixed-line operators into the mobile mix - but the behemoth already has more than 376 million customers, and the year-on-year subscription growth for January was up 23 percent.

China Unicom reported on Tuesday that its aggregate, post-paid GSM cellular service subscription level increased to 121.69 million in January, compared to 120.56 million in December. And aggregated CDMA cellular service subscriptions rose to 42.23 million from 41.93 million.

"The strongest-ever monthly growth suggests a growing monopoly by China Mobile in the mainland's mobile telecom market," DBS Vickers wrote in a research report yesterday.

"Such an impressive figure was mainly attributed to continual fixed-to-mobile migration and was partly a seasonal effect from the lunar new year festival," DBS said.

China Mobile's first-month figure beat JPMorgan's estimate average of 5.97 million new subscribers per month. The investment bank still places a "buy" tag on China Mobile, with a target price of HK$165 - which doesn't factor in the potential risk of the looming industry restructuring.

China Mobile remains dominant among the two mobile-service operators. Meanwhile, traditional fixed-line operators - China Telecom and China Netcom - have been losing subscribers to mobile- service operators as mobile phones become increasingly popular.

Investors poured their money into telecom stocks recently as speculation mounted that the mainland was close to making set plans for the long-awaited industry. The government-led reshuffle hopes to balance the mobile competition among different players.

BNP cuts ratings

BNP Paribas yesterday cut its rating on the overall mainland mobile industry from "overweight" to "neutral" in a research report. It cited regulatory uncertainties.

In the report, BNP analyst Eric Wen trimmed the 12-month price target for China Mobile from HK$121 to HK$108 while keeping the stock recommendation at "hold".

And Wen gave a "buy" rating to China Telecom, despite cutting its target price from HK$8.4 to HK$7.5. He reduced the rating on China Netcom from "buy" to "hold", trimming its share target price by 14 percent to HK$27.5.

Some investors cashed in recent gains on mainland telecom stocks yesterday, thus pulling down their share values.

China Mobile slid 2.68 percent to HK$116; China Unicom sagged 4.07 percent to HK$18.38; China Telecom lost 5.22 percent to close at HK$5.99; and China Netcom dipped 3.03 percent to HK$24.

Other news agencies contributed to this story.

(HK Edition 02/21/2008 page2)