Chinese to send 18 bln text messages during Spring Festival

Special Report: Spring Festival Special 2009

BEIJING, Jan. 26 (Chinese media) -- China's mobile phone

users might send more than 18 billion text messages during the week-long Spring

Festival that runs until Jan. 31, telecom operators said Monday.

Many of this year's messages feature a play on words.

Under the lunar calendar, 2009 is the year of the Ox, or "niu" in Chinese. So

millions of people have gotten greetings saying "Happy Niu Year."

Text messaging has become increasingly popular during

the festival, the biggest holiday in China. Last Lunar New Year, 17 billion

messages were sent, compared with 15.2 billion in 2007, 12.6 billion in 2006 and

11 billion in 2005.

Staff at China Telecom, China Unicom and China

Mobile, the top three telecom operators, said the 2009 projection was based on

data patterns that link messaging and the rise of mobile phone users.

China's mobile phone population hit 641 million in

2008, up 17 percent from 2007, for a mobile phone penetration rate of 48.5

percent.

Just under 700 billion text messages were sent in

China last year, up 18.2 percent year-on-year.

With third-generation (3G) telecommunication

technology in pilot use in some cities, industry analysts expected multimedia

messages to spice up the holiday life of at least some users.

But it remains too early to tell the market effect of

3G mobile phones as the communication networks are still being built.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Industry and

Information Technology issued long-awaited 3G licenses, with China Mobile

getting the domestically-developed TD-SCDMA standard, China Telecom receiving a

license for the U.S.-developed CDMA2000 and China Unicom getting permission to

operate Europe's WCDMA.