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Mobile phone use in China has increased tremendously, even surpassing the use of traditional computers, authorities said. But there's one problem - mobile phone users have been complaining of receiving tons of annoying text messages.
A recent survey conducted by a Beijing-based website revealed that Chinese mobile phone users have received more than 200 billion spam messages on their mobile phones from January to June of this year.
The survey, whose result was reported by the official Xinhua News Agency, said more than half, or 59 per cent of those annoying spam messages to mobile phones were for advertising.
The same survey, however, found that while majority of the 200 billion spam messages to mobile phones were annoying, only 1.5% of them were made for fraudulent purposes.
The more than 200 billion spam messages recorded in the first half of this year have resulted to 20 million yuan (US$4.9 million) worth of economic losses to mobile phone users.
On average, the survey said mobile phone users in Beijing, Guangzhou, Jiangsu and Shanghai received two annoying spam messages on their mobile phones every single day.
To avoid receiving spam messages, users of China's three mobile operators can opt out of subscription by replying with "0000" to any annoying message starting December 1.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology earlier reported that the number of mobile phone users in the country reached 1.22 billion at the end of October, and the number is expected to continue growing in the following months.
The provinces of Sichuan, Henan, and Guangdong saw the most growth in mobile phone users from January until the end of October, the ministry reported.
The popularity of mobile phone use, with 817 million users connected to the Internet, has also triggered the sudden rise in the number of mobile spam messages. Majority of the spam messages are for promotions and advertisements, while some are for information dissemination and announcements of every sort.
