According to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the country's mobile subscriber base grew 3.65 percent in March to 1.294 billion. That's up 0.35 percent from February.

Notably, the number equals 94.6 percent of the country's estimated population.

Users in China sent 60.31 billion text messages last month, equating to about 1.51 messages per phone per day.

comScore recently reported that 186.3 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (76.6 percent mobile market penetration). Numbers might not be comparable given that MIT's data takes into consideration feature phones along with smartphones.