China: The World’s Biggest 5G Market

How big is the world's largest 5G mobile market?

1.2 billion active subscriptions—and that's all in China, at the end of 2025.

It’s almost three times the size of the next largest market, India, which had around 431 million 5G subscriptions at the same date.

Here's an overview of this massive market, powered by data you can find in TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.

5G providers in China

The 5G sector in China is served by four players: well-established mobile network operators (MNOs) China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, plus newcomer China Radio and Television, which launched in 2022 under the name China Broadnet.

China 5G Market Shares, end-2025

All four companies have the Chinese government as a majority shareholder.

Background: 5G in China

With LTE penetration rapidly approaching saturation, by 2018, the nation’s cellcos had turned their attention toward 5G.

Mirroring China Mobile’s successful strategy with 4G, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom all participated in the international standard-setting process for the nascent technology. The three MNOs partnered with vendors to test a variety of fifth-generation technologies, working alongside the ITU and specifications body 3GPP.

Unlike 4G, however, the firms dedicated a substantial portion of their efforts toward industrial use cases for 5G, in areas ranging from telemedicine to manufacturing and smart city operations. This was partly at the behest of the government, which sees 5G as a potential economic multiplier that could help accelerate development in sectors not directly connected to telecoms.

In December 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology awarded 5G trial concessions to each of the three incumbent operators, which lost little time switching on their 5G networks. All three launched commercial services on October 31, 2019, initially covering 50 cities.

By the end of 2019, China Mobile had deployed 50,000 base transceiver stations (BTS), while Unicom and Telecom reported 60,000 sites each.

For further 5G network construction, Telecom and Unicom have partnered to jointly develop infrastructure, and China Mobile has teamed up with newcomer China Broadnet.

By end-2025, there were 4.84 million 5G base stations across China, a net increase of 588,000 in twelve months. 5G-enabled sites accounted for almost 38% of all base stations at the same date.

Rapid adoption of 5G

Although the newly launched 5G networks accounted for only 0.1% of China’s mobile subscription total (1.6 billion) by the end of 2019, adoption began to increase in the second half of the following year.

There were around 129 million 5G subscribers at the end of 2020, equivalent to 8% of the overall mobile market. This number rose to 390 million twelve months later (24% of the market).

66% of mobile market

The 5G total jumped to around 570 million by end-2022—34% of all mobile subscriptions—and by the end of 2025 it had reached 1.2 billion, accounting for 65.9% of all mobile phone users, an increase of 9.2 percentage points compared to the end of the previous year.

5G Growth in China

At end-2025, China Mobile claimed 53% of the 5G subscription total, followed by Telecom on 24%, Unicom on 20% and Broadnet with just 3%.

Looking ahead, the GlobalComms Forecast Service expects China to be home to almost 1.6 billion 5G network subscriptions by the end of 2030. At this point, the technology will account for around 85% of the overall mobile market.

Data on mobile markets, fixed broadband, fixed voice markets, and more

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