According to the latest statistics provided by the Bureau of Statistics of Beijing and the National Bureau of Statistics of China, by the end of 2008, the number of mobile phone users in Beijing reached 16.162 million, which means every one hundred people in the city had 95.4 mobile phones, a decrease of 2.5 compared with the same period of 2007.
The reason for the decrease is reportedly because of the increase of resident population. During the entire year of 2008, the number of Beijing's resident population increased 620,000, but the number of new mobile phone users only increased 179,000.
By the end of 2008, the number of local phone users in Beijing was 8.848 million, of which, 6.815 million were in urban areas while 2.033 million were in rural area. At the same time, the number of Internet users in Beijing was 4.789 million, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%. A total number of 33.74 billion wireless short messages were sent out from the city in 2008, a year-on-year increase of 11%.