China's mobile phone short message business booming

From sify(finance).com: SMS biz balloons in China

"China's mobile phone users are expected to send over 220 billion short messages during the year, raking about $2.12 billion, the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has forecast.
From January to October this year, Chinese mobile phone users have sent 176.06 billion short messages, the MII said. The year end figure is expected to exceed 220 billion, an increase of about 50 billion year-on-year, it said.
If each text message costs 0.1 yuan (about 1.2 US cents), the business had generated a total of 17.6 billion yuan (about $2.12 billion) by the end of October this year, a ministry official said."

"China had 315.1 million mobile phone users as of the end of August 2004. "