China's mobile phone shipments up 8.7% in October

BEIJING - China's mobile phone shipments surged 8.7 percent year-on-year to nearly 32.27 million units in October 2025, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed on Wednesday.

Approximately 90.9 percent of the October shipments were 5G mobile phones, nearing 29.33 million units and an increase of 9.7 percent year-on-year, according to the CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The number of 5G mobile phone users in China had topped 1.18 billion by the end of October this year - a net increase of 170 million from the end of 2024 and accounting for 64.7 percent of all mobile phone users in the country, according to data from the MIIT.

China has also seen substantial growth in its number of 5G base stations this year, the MIIT said. As of the end of October, there were about 4.76 million 5G base stations in the country, with a net increase of 507,000 from the end of last year, accounting for 37 percent of all mobile base stations.

In the first 10 months of 2025, China's telecom industry maintained its stable performance, according to the MIIT. The country's telecom revenues exceeded a total of 1.46 trillion yuan ($206 billion) during the period, which was a year-on-year increase of 0.9 percent.