China recently issued conflicting sets of data for the number of cell phone and landline users in the country. But the data all reflect a net loss of millions of cell phone users, leading some to speculate whether the decline was due to the economic downturn, pandemic-related deaths, or something else all together.
Today, nearly every Chinese person needs a cell phone to commute into major cities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities mandate citizens to input their health information into a cellphone app, which then generates a QR code that determines a person’s risk of getting the disease and thus, whether the person can pass through security checkpoints.
The code is scanned for entering a residential compound, taking a bus or metro, visiting a grocery store, and so on.
Thus, the drop in users is unusual given that there is a greater, not lesser, need for cell phones.
“It’s hard to find a credible reason to explain why so many cellphone users dropped in China when the market had a big need for it in 2020,” said U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan in a phone interview.
“Owning a cellphone is very cheap in China...In other words, people won’t end phone service because of the cost issue in general,” Tang added.
Landline phones have become less of a necessity following the widespread use of cellphones, and thus, its use has been on a downward trend. But the drop in cellphone users is hard to explain.
Conflicting Data
Telecommunication World is a weekly magazine that was founded and managed by MIIT.According to the bulletin, “the whole country lost 16.4 million phone users in 2020, and the total number of users dropped to 1.776 billion.” In detail, cellphone users dropped by 7.28 million to 1.594 billion, while landline users dropped by 9.13 million to 182 million.”
However, these numbers are conflicted with the numbers published by mobile carriers and on the MIIT website.
China only has three mobile carriers, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. They recently published their performance reports.
Judging from that data, there was a net loss of 5.573 million mobile users (-8.359 + 15.45 - 12.664) in 2020.
Then, comparing the November 2019 data to the December 2020 data, the number of cell phone users fell by 6.89 million, while landline users dropped by 8.92 million.