The country's three major wireless operators released their January operating data Monday, with China Mobile maintaining its lead in both the total number of subscribers and 3G subscribers.
China Mobile, the country's largest wireless operator by user base, reported that the number of its mobile subscribers reached 655.44 million until January, including 53.94 million 3G subscribers.
Mobile subscribers of China Unicom totaled 202.89 million and its 3G subscribers reached 43.07 million by January, the carrier said in a statement.
China Telecom, the smallest of the country's three carriers, reported that its mobile subscribers increased to 129.25 million in January, with 38.7 million 3G subscribers.
Huang Meng, an industry analyst at consulting firm Analysys International, said it would be hard for China Mobile to maintain the leading position in terms of 3G users beyond this year, given the fast growth of its competitors.
China Mobile reported an outstanding 138 percent year-on-year jump in 3G subscribers in January, but China Unicom achieved an even better growth of 178 percent over the same period, while China Telecom saw a surge of 183 percent.
Huang noted that the homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G network, which is adopted by China Mobile, has put the company at a disadvantage in terms of attracting 3G users.
China Unicom's WCDMA and China Telecom's CDMA2000 networks are more widely used in the world, which makes it easier for the two companies to cooperate with international handset producers.
Given the disadvantage, China Mobile has been speeding up the development of its 4G TD-LTE network. And media reports said that the company is likely to cooperate with Apple Inc on the iPhone 5, which may support 4G network.
Ji Chendong, a senior IT consultant at KPMG China, said that though China Mobile has led the way in the development of the next generation network, it still needs time to put the 4G network into use and build its advantage.
The market for 3G is still developing in China, and it is not likely for the 4G network to be widely used in two years, according to Ji.