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Simon Parry

Mobile phone ownership in Hong Kong has jumped to 6.56 million subscriptions - equivalent to more than 96 per cent of the population. 
Despite analysts' predictions earlier this year that the mobile phone penetration rate had reached saturation point, competitive promotions and the lure of new technology appears to have fuelled a sharp rise in the number of new subscriptions. 
Customers signed  up for services at a rate of  about 60,000 a month over the summer. Between May and July, the number of mobile phone subscriptions, including pre-paid SIM cards, shot up from 6.38 million to 6.56 million, according to the latest figures from the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta).
The two-month boom has given Hong Kong a mobile phone penetration rate of 96.32 per cent based on the latest government population figures of 6.81 million.
The penetration rate for July is 2 percentage points higher than  May and gives Hong Kong what may be the highest number of mobile phones per capita anywhere in the world.
Hong Kong has already been rated as having Asia's highest penetration rate for mobile phones.  Only Finland and Iceland are ranked higher in world terms, although varying methods and sources are used to calculate the figures by different  surveys.

Emily Hung, spokeswoman for Nokia, the top-selling mobile phone brand in Hong Kong, said her company had noticed the growth in the market and believed new technology was helping fuel a boom in subscriptions.
'A lot of new products have been introduced on the market so customers have more choice,' she said. 'We have been selling very well over the past few months.'
Phones that  feature built-in cameras have proved a hit with  Hong Kong customers,  growing in popularity as picture quality has improved.
A spokeswoman for Orange said there had been 'significant subscriber growth' from May to July and the trend had been helped by the introduction of legalised soccer gambling.
Services broadcasting soccer information to subscribers, along with other promotions, had helped bring about a substantial growth in subscriber numbers, the spokeswoman said.
The growth in the popularity of text messaging using mobile phones has also seen a rapid acceleration over the summer, with the number of messages sent and received breaking through the 100 million-a-month mark.
In July, Ofta figures show, more than 113 million text messages were sent and received in Hong Kong, 14 million more than  in June.
According to Nokia, a big-selling mobile phone model was the one  that enabled messages  to be written with a stylus on a notepad-type screen and be transmitted without the sender having to key in the letters.



HK mobile love affair hits new heights