BEIJING: Shipments of 5G phones in China surged 79.7 per cent on a year-on-year basis to 168 million units in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed on Saturday.

The volume accounted for 74.1 per cent of the country’s total mobile phone shipments during the period, according to the CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

According to the data, half of the 296 newly-released mobile phone models during this period were 5G phones. In August alone, China shipped 17.69 million units of 5G phones, up 9.4 per cent on a year-on-year basis, the data showed.