China Mobile has revealed that its four-and-a-half month old app store Mobile Market had amassed almost 1 million registered users at the end of December. 

 

The operator late last week revealed that Mobile Market’s 960,000 registered users had racked up just over 2 million downloads by year-end. The application outlet, which launched on August 17, boasts 29,000 developers.

 

The success of China Mobile’s app store is crucial in its battle against W-CDMA operator China Unicom which has reportedly sold more than 300,000 iPhone devices.

 

Meanwhile, China Mobile has hit its revised year-end 3G subscriber target of 5 million customers. The operator disclosed last week that its TD-SCDMA subscribers surpassed the 5 million mark by end-December.

 

But the number is well short of China Mobile’s July 2009 goal of reaching 10 million 3G users by end-2009, an unrealistic target that was subsequently revised by the firm.

 

In early December, China Mobile chairman & chief executive officer, Wang Jianzhou said a key impediment to mass consumer take-up of the TD-SCDMA service, which launched in April 2008, was a lack of low-end devices.

 

“We still need more low priced 3G terminals,” Wang told delegates at the Mobile Asia Congress conference in Hong Kong.

 

As such, in late-December, China Mobile unveiled 11 new TD-SCDMA devices, including five low-end handsets priced below RMB1,000 ($146.42) apiece as part of the company’s “Low Cost 3G Handset” project.

 

China Mobile has now increased the supply of its TD-SCDMA terminals to 266, including 80 handsets, 65 data cards and 58 netbooks.

 

The operator plans to increase its handset subsidies in 2010 in order to increase the affordability of its TD-SCDMA service.

 

In December, China Mobile also completed its third stage network rollout, with its 100,000+ TD-SCDMA base stations now spanning 70% of China’s prefecture-level cities.