Still, China Mobile's user base will have to start growing even faster to meet an aggressive government target of at least 50 million TD-SCDMA users by the end of next year.

Spokeswomen at China Unicom and China Mobile declined to comment on the subscriber figures. But China Unicom's faster growth could be partly due to its wider 3G network coverage at time of launch. China Unicom covered 285 Chinese cities when it launched 3G services, while China Mobile still reached just 38 cities in July.

The uptick in China Mobile's growth could be due to an economic rebound, which Wang said has pushed call traffic back to the levels it saw before the global downturn.

China has over 700 million mobile subscribers, according to official figures.