China Mobile hits a half billion subscribers

China Mobile officially passed the half-billion subscriber count mark as of the end of August, and we'd just like to present a couple staggering ways of looking at that figure:

• The carrier has a phone in the pocket of nearly 38 percent of the population. For comparison's sake, the biggest carrier in the US clocks in at under 29 percent -- never mind the fact that China has over 1.3 billion people.

• If China Mobile were a US carrier, it'd be providing every American man, woman, and child with about 1.65 phones (and OPhones).

Call us when you hit a billion, guys -- we're pretty amped to liveblog that party.