Operators and the Internet are facing a turning point: the number of mobile phone users in the country has decreased by 20,000 in one day

Although Internet company stocks have skyrocketed recently, they have to face a harsh reality: the number of users has reached its peak!

China's information industry is facing a common ceiling, not just for operators, but for all Internet companies, especially those traffic companies that measure their value by the number of users and the length of time they spend online. This is because there are fewer and fewer mobile phone users, and the number of Internet users is no longer increasing.

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Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the economic operation of the communications industry in 2020. In 2020, the total telecommunications business revenue reached 1.36 trillion yuan, an increase of 3.6% over the previous year, and the growth rate increased by 2.9 percentage points year-on-year. The total volume of telecommunications business calculated at the previous year's prices was 1.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.6%.

In 2020, the number of telephone users nationwide decreased by 16.4 million, and the total number fell back to 1.776 billion. Among them, the total number of mobile phone users was 1.594 billion, a net decrease of 7.28 million throughout the year, and the penetration rate was 113.9 units per 100 people, down 0.5 units per 100 people from the end of last year. The total number of 4G users reached 1.289 billion, with a net increase of 6.79 million throughout the year, accounting for 80.8% of the number of mobile phone users. The total number of fixed-line telephone users was 182 million, a net decrease of 9.13 million throughout the year, and the penetration rate dropped to 13 units per 100 people.

As of the end of 2020, the total number of fixed Internet broadband access users of the three basic telecommunications companies reached 484 million, with a net increase of 34.27 million throughout the year. Among them, the total number of fixed Internet broadband access users with access speeds of 100Mbps and above reached 435 million, with a net increase of 50.74 million throughout the year, accounting for 89.9% of the total number of fixed broadband users, an increase of 4.5 percentage points from the end of the previous year; the number of users with access speeds of 1000Mbps and above reached 6.4 million, a net increase of 5.53 million over the end of the previous year.

In 2020, mobile Internet access traffic consumption reached 165.6 billion GB, an increase of 35.7% over the previous year. The average monthly mobile Internet traffic per user (DOU) reached 10.35GB/user/month throughout the year, an increase of 32% over the previous year; the DOU in December was as high as 11.92GB/user/month. Among them, mobile Internet traffic reached 156.8 billion GB, an increase of 29.6% over the previous year, accounting for 94.7% of the total traffic.

In 2020, the volume of mobile SMS business in China increased by 18.1% over the previous year, and the growth rate decreased by 14.1 percentage points from the previous year; the revenue of mobile SMS business increased by 2.4% over the previous year, and the growth rate difference of mobile SMS business volume and revenue decreased from 33% in the previous year to 15.7%. The impact of Internet applications on voice business substitution continued to deepen. In 2020, the duration of outgoing mobile phone calls in China was 2.24 trillion minutes, a decrease of 6.2% from the previous year.

According to statistics from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the total shipments of the domestic mobile phone market in 2020 totaled 308 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 20.8%. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in November, the domestic mobile phone market shipped 29.584 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 15.1%. In the fourth quarter of 2020, 5G mobile phone models accounted for 60% of the Chinese mobile phone market, and all of them were large-screen mobile phones.

From this point of view, the number of mobile phone users has entered a downward channel, the growth of mobile Internet traffic has also begun to slow down, and the growth of broadband users is still continuing.

The "2020 Mobile Internet Panoramic Ecosystem Report" released by QuestMobile shows that in the past year, while the growth in the number of users has almost stagnated, the average monthly usage time of mobile users has increased by 12.9%, from 128.2 hours in April 2019 to 144.8 hours in April 2020.

Among them, BATT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Toutiao) + Kuaishou accounted for 80% of the mobile Internet usage time. Specifically, in Q1 2020, the proportion of Tencent and Baidu products in the total usage time of the market decreased, among which Tencent dropped from 45.6% to 43.2%, and Baidu dropped from 9% to 7.4%. The proportion of Alibaba's time in the market has hardly changed, only increasing from 10.4% in 2019 to 10.6% in 2020, a change of only 0.2%.

A person has only 24 hours in a day. Even if many people are used to staying up late, it is impossible to extend the time spent online indefinitely. The increase in video services will exclusively consume users' vision, thereby leading to a passive reduction in the use of more services.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on December 10, 2020 showed that the total grain output in the country in 2020 was 133.9 billion jin, an increase of 11.3 billion jin over the previous year, a growth of 0.9%. Grain production has once again achieved a bumper harvest, with output remaining above 1.3 trillion jin for six consecutive years.

Since the land area cannot be increased, we can only increase the grain output per unit area. If the yield increase of a single crop has reached its limit, we need to study more scientific and reasonable reuse or intercropping. If that doesn't work, then we should change the rice variety?